


Shadowblood

by tillwehavefaces



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Action/Adventure, Age Difference, Anal Sex, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Exhibitionism, Fantasy, Feminization, Foe Yay, Gang Rape, Implied Mpreg, Intrigue, M/M, Mind Rape, Minor Character Death, Not Beta Read, Older Bottom/Younger Top, Older Sub/Younger Dom, Oral Sex, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Underage, Power Dynamics, Public Sex, Rough Sex, Size Kink, Slavery, Slow Build, Spanking, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-10-27 09:49:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17764478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tillwehavefaces/pseuds/tillwehavefaces
Summary: Bryony is a Ghostblade, a servant of the Shadowblood Tower and assassin of its enemies. Leyn is a knight of the Circle of Ortheus, sworn to destroy all evil. Chance had them meet as enemies, but fate has something different in mind...





	1. Marshes of Misery

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a NaNoWriMo novel, and it’s kind of a hot mess, but I hope people who like this sort of dark, messed-up, hate-to-love deal can get something out of it lol.
> 
> It should go without saying from the tags that the relationship depicted is in NO WAY safe, healthy or normal—not even close. It starts out non-consensual, it is controlling, possessive, frequently abusive—basically, all that good shit.
> 
> The underage sections occur only in retrospect/reference, but they are graphic so be warned. This story goes to some very dark places, and puts you in the heads of some very screwed-up characters.
> 
> I considered tagging it as slow-burn, but it’s more like the slashy goodness doesn’t start till halfway through—just letting you know in advance since YMMV for that much waiting lol. Tags will be added as applicable.
> 
> I’m posting the first few chapters in the hope this’ll inspire me to finish it or something idk. This is unbeta’d, so constructive criticism is more than welcome 😊

Ten nights they had been walking.  Ten nights, and still it seemed they were no nearer the dark mountains whose looming shadow had swallowed the horizon as they set out from Dunmire. Ten nights of walking—though walking was too nice a word for it.  It had been ten nights of trudging through stinking, sucking mud and wading through foul, midge-infested water. Each step was a renewed weariness and each day a fresh misery.

They stopped now and then so Tam could piss into a pool or Orrin could fall into one (hope it wasnae the same yin, lad, Tam chortled) or so Lia could tear off a piece of her cloak to stuff down the front of her leggings (her time of the month had come early, she said, blushing). All told, they made slow progress. The road which issued from under the dour gate of the lychwall was little more than a thin, meandering trail of slightly firmer mud, and had by the fifth day dissolved completely. The trees grew sparser and shabbier, hunched over like old beggars with barely a withered handful of leaves to cover their gnarly nakedness.

Other things appeared in their place. At first the marshes had seemed curiously devoid of life: the skies empty, the waters unstirring. There were still no birds, but now and again Laar’s spear would emerge with a fish impaled on its point. These were unlike any fish Bryony had seen—smooth-skinned and slimy with legs instead of fins. When speared, they exhibited no struggle, simply staring with huge filmy eyes until Laar dashed their brains out on a stone. Fat worms with bloated, corpse-white bodies squirmed blindly through the mud and nameless things with scaly skin and thin, questing tentacles slithered from one pool to another.

The plant-life too became stranger. Blood-red flowers sprouted long tendrils with serrated edges and tips dripping opaque fluids that ate through metal as it were sugar (this Dracofex learnt the hard way). Under the black water they sometimes glimpsed vast, gaping mouths lined with thousands of tiny teeth. Orrin kept as far from these as possible.

Over all there hung a sickly grey-green brume that robbed the sun of warmth even at its zenith, and made the vague forms of the tumbled ruins and tall barrow-mounds that dotted the landscape appear at once menacing and insubstantial. The rain never stopped, only varied in intensity. The trees had eyes.

Leading the party was Alaris d’Oreval, once an officer in the army of the Holy Republic, now the sworn champion of the Chosen. She had a handsome, boyish face with clear brown eyes and a cleft chin. Her yellow hair, darkened to brown by the rain, dripped over her collar and down the back of her blue greatcoat.  The uniform, with its brass buttons and trimmings of gold braid, kept still a dishevelled splendour, for all that the woman had long given up trying to keep it clean. It looked well on her tall, broad-shouldered frame. Bryony sometimes wondered if he might have fallen in love with her, had she been a man.

Scuttling at her heels like a lapdog was Orrin, her self-appointed planton, whose uniform was considerably less majestic.  Shabby to begin with, the burgundy jacket and white leggings had gradually been rendered the same unappealing shade of brown. It was, moreover, at least two sizes too large for his gangrel frame.

Then there was Lia Marcelin, the God-bride herself, the cause of all their travails. She looked to have seen perhaps fifteen summers, hair white as bone, grey eyes large and expressive and shining with a luminous serenity. Her lips were full, and pulled down at the corners in a way that gave her face a look of profound but unutterable sadness. Behind her Kaidi and Laar, pale-haired barbarians from the northern wastes, walked hand-in-hand and talked together in their own strange language that sounded to Bryony like the glitter of swords under a cold sun.

In the centre of the group was Sister Eudeline, carrying her silver witch-lantern with the blue flame burning at its heart. She was a mouse of a woman with hair as grey as her habit and face pinched in a perpetual half-squint (she had dropped her spectacles down a silt-pit on their first day out of Dunmire and came perilously close to following after). She walked alongside Colmag Candlewick, the trow mechaniker, who atop her clattering steam-automaton just surpassed the lych-priestess in height. Dracofex, Colmag called her mount, though it was little enough like a dragon and quite a bit like a pot-bellied stove with a head and stubby wings.

Tam and Ynara were next. Ynara was a witch, and carried the bones of her ancestors in a leather pouch around her neck. Taking one loping stride for each two of hers was Tam Linfield of Highglen, a man of middle years, bluff, bearded, and tall, with a stout belly that the road’s privations had yet to wear down and a huge two-hander slung across his back.

Last—last and alone, was Bryony. Bryony the Ghostblade, knife in the night and stabber in the dark.  Servant of the Shadowblood Tower and assassin of its enemies.

Ten companions in all; the Chosen and her Company, each with their own reasons for following the Maid who was to be King. Lia was the Annointed of Arion, the Daughter of Destiny, the Prophesied Prince.

But it was another God that Bryony served, and He had His own plans for the girl.

A motley crew they made, the ten companions on the road from Dunmire to the Stormtalon Mountains: Alaris in her blue uniform, Orrin in his burgundy-turned-brown, Lia and Sister Eudeline in grey, Kaidi and Laar in their muddied white furs, Colmag in her sensible travelling khakis with their endless pockets, Tam in his broad-brimmed leather hat and parti-coloured coat, Ynara in garb of earthen greens and browns that seemed to mirror the colours of the landscape around them.

As for Bryony, he wore black. Black to meld into the night.  Black to disguise bleeding.  Black to hide fear, and to inspire it. Black was effective in all these things, but especially the last.

For instance, whenever Orrin turned to find Bryony crept up behind him he would start and swear.

‘Lor’ love us! Anyone ever tell you how fucking creepy you are?’

‘Tisnae creepy.’ That was Tam’s voice.

‘Wha?’

‘A said—’ here the man belched, loudly, and scratched his chest. ‘Scuse me. A said it isnae creepy—A mean, ‘tis, but smart too, is what ‘tis. Nae skin exposed—naewhaur for the bloody midges to puncture ye.’

‘Whatever.  Still gives me the creeps.’ Shooting Bryony a parting glare over his shoulder, the boy tramped on ahead.

Bryony smiled behind his veil. As brainless a band of bleeding-hearts and bunglers as they were, travelling in company was not without its amusements. Frightening the whelp out of his wits was a simple pleasure Bryony could not deny himself.

Of course, there were downsides to being little more than a silent, menacing shadow.

If the days were cold, the nights were colder and the witchfire gave no heat. The others huddled together for warmth, sleeping back to back and top to toe.

Bryony slept alone and clenched his teeth to stop them chattering.

 

⁂

 

The cold was not the only danger that reared its head at nightfall. By their seventh night shadows, vaguely man-shaped, had begun to materialise in the mists. They slouched through the darkness with squelching footsteps that stopped just outside the circle of lantern-light.  Every so often one would move closer, so Bryony could half make out the outline of its twisted form—horrible and wrong and broken in ways that should have made movement impossible. Then the lychlight would flare up and the footsteps would retreat. Even so, none of them got much sleep.

On the tenth night they made camp on an islet of red rushes, between two tall stone monoliths. Kaidi leaned back against the bole of a wizened grey tree, the muscles of her face taut with strain.  Laar stroked her swollen belly and crooned mournful, wordless songs that sent strange tingles down Bryony’s spine.  Something flashed through his mind: not so much an image, as a sensation. Someone was holding him, someone with a soft, womanly voice and a comforting smell. She was singing, and though he did not understand the words, the song made him feel safe, and also deeply sad, as if he’d lost something he hadn’t known he possessed.  Then the feeling was gone, and the memory with it—if indeed it was a memory.  More likely nothing but a fancy—childish and pathetic and unbecoming a Towerborn. In the Tower there were no lullabies, only screams, and the only safety was in your wits and your blade.

Starting a fire on the sodden, rain-pelted earth was of course an impossibility, even had they fuel and dry kindling. This was an instance were the steam-drake made itself useful. Colmag poured into Dracofex’s metallic maw rainwater, diced pieces of swampfish and a portion of the dried meat and vegetables that remained to them. The automaton gulped these down and snapped shut its brass jaws, before settling back on its brass haunches, shaking with metallic purrs. Steam whistled from its ears and nostrils, and after an hour or so the door in its belly slid open to reveal a bubbling pot of stew.

The stew had quickly lost its novelty. Still, it was edible, and it was hot, and after a day of mud and rain not even Bryony was going to complain. Even if he did wonder if they weren’t consuming the by-products of the thing’s digestion.

Later, when they were all curled up in their fur-lined oilskin sleeping-sacks, Bryony’s keen ears picked up Tam’s whisper—or the nearest thing to it the man could manage.

 ‘Eh, lad?’ This was how Tam started his evening dialogues with Orrin—though they were dialogues in only the loosest sense. The young soldier gave a half-sensible murmur in response.

‘Ye remember that inn back in Dunmire? Nice place, wasnae ‘t?  Warm beds with clean sheets.  Guid vittles—hot, a’ the ale ye could drink, and nice, friendly wenches tae boot…’

Orrin grunted again.  The boy was far from the most animated of conversation partners, but all Tam required of his subjects was sentience and immobility. While the former was questionable, the boy certainly wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

‘Ye mind that wench wha served us, the one with that long dark hair, and those big, bouncing tits?  Aye, sonsiest maid A’ve seen in many’s a year.’

‘Was she, Tam?’ Orrin asked, rather distantly. Bryony smirked to himself. He’d bet a hundred skulls it wasn’t a tavern-maid the boy was thinking of.

‘Aye, she was a right comely lass. Why, in ma younger days, A wouldae had her o’er a beer-barrel, right there and then. ‘Lor, what a yin she was… Give me a look now and then, did’ye mark that, lad?’

 _Everyone in the fucking tavern was looking at you, you idiot. You were singing loudly and badly enough to make our ears bleed. Drunken, lecherous old fool_ … Bryony focussed his mind so as to filter out the words, leaving only the pleasant drone of the man’s smooth bass voice.  It wasn’t long before he was asleep.


	2. Under-Tower

When Bryony woke, it was to sweat and darkness and screams. 

Was he back in the Tower?  No, not _in_ the Tower. Under it.

The air stunk of piss and unwashed bodies. Overhead were the thin slats of the bunk above his; about him were the heat and stench and bony limbs of the nine boys who shared his pallet. Somebody was whispering to him.  Bryony was wanted—only his name wasn’t Bryony, was it? 

Honey. That was his name.

It was the Brute, of course. The Brute wanted Honey.

The boy called Honey, the boy who was not yet Bryony, trembled where he lay.

He knew he shouldn’t have sucked off Rag. But the boy had had meat—real meat from up top, and Honey was starving.  Of course, ratlings were always starving—save for the Brute’s lot, who could fight for food or the Fitches, who could steal it. If, like Honey, you were neither strong nor sneaky, you had to be obliging with those who were—if you wanted to eat, that is.

Honey clambered over the prone bodies of his bedmates, ignoring the mumbled curses and dodging the sleepy blows. Waiting for him was the Brute’s chief lieutenant, Lump. He was called that because of the large, ugly lump on his forehead. It looked like a boiled egg bursting out of its shell.

‘So you’re the little rat what they call Honey’, he said, giving Honey a slow up and down that made him feel queasy. ‘No wonder the chief wants you then, is it? Would’ve picked you myself, if I’d known. Still, the chief must ‘ave his way. Come on then, ickle Honey-tongue.’

Honey followed obediently, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and scratching his body where it was chafed by the coarse wool tunic. Lump led him out of the dormitories, and through the twisting maze of tunnels that was all the world Honey knew. Of course, there _was_ more to the world than these endless warrens of rock. Above them was the Tower, where the Chosen—those who pleased the Watchers with their cunning and strength—were taken. To Honey it seemed as distant and unattainable as the heavens themselves. He wondered if there was more food in the Tower.

At last they came to the high-vaulted chamber where the Brute held court. The room was illuminated by chunks of glowstone embedded in the walls, and displayed between them were weapons of various shapes and uses—wooden sticks with spiked balls on the end, and other, taller sticks with barbed points; long, curving knives and axes with serrated edges—battered and rusted, most of them, but still wicked and deadly. Just looking at them made Honey shiver.

Below them the Brute’s boys—the biggest and toughest in this quarter of the warrens—leaned against the walls, talking and laughing raucously. Some of them were wrestling, or playing games with little wooden pieces. A lot of them were playing with ratlings, casually and openly fucking the mouths and arses of their young toys while carrying on their other amusements. Honey averted his eyes.

At the end of the hall was a throne built of oddments of metal and wood. Next to it was a door, with two burly boys standing—or rather, slouching—guard on either side.

‘I’ve brought the Chief his wee titbit’, Lump announced when they reached the door, shifting his weight to one leg and releasing a loud fart. The boy on the left shrugged.

Lump pushed the door open, and jolted Honey through. ‘Ere we are then, wee Honeysuckle’, he said, and chortled at his own joke.

They were in a smaller room, a room with proper furniture. There was a huge bed, bigger than any Honey had seen, with real sheets and pillows and a mattress that didn’t look like it was stuffed with straw (did the Brute really sleep _here_ , all by himself?). There was a table and chair beside a crackling brazier, a rack of things that weren’t quite like the weapons Honey had seen outside, but looked like they hurt all the same, and a tall piece of brightly polished metal in a wooden frame (a _looking-glass_ , supplied a part of Honey’s mind he had almost forgotten was there).

There was a small child sitting on the ground.  The lower half of its face was caked with blood.

Lump saw Honey looking and grinned horribly.  ‘Little ‘ore rarked up the Chief. Bit when it was meant to suck and spat when it was meant to swallow. Had ‘em pull all its teef out.’

When they came nearer, the child turned its head toward them.  Its eyes were empty as those of a corpse.

The boy sitting in the chair—the boy Honey knew must be the Brute—stood up.

‘There you are Lump. Took your fucking time about it.’

‘Sorry, Chief’, Lump said. ‘Little shit didn’t wanna come. ‘Had to give ‘im a few kicks up the backside to get ‘im moving.’

 _He’s lying!_ Honey wanted to say. He knew better than to say no to the Brute! He doubted whether protesting would do him any good, however, so he stayed silent.

‘Is that so? Well, he’ll soon see what comes to rats who put on _attitude_.’

The boy was long and lank and old—the oldest boy Honey had seen, old enough to have fine, pale whiskers on his cheeks and chin. His nose was crooked, as if it had been broken more than once. His eyes were dark—glassy and cruel. He smiled when he saw Honey staring, a wide smile full of yellow teeth that had been filed to points.

‘You can go, Lump’, he said. Lump coughed and farted, and took his leave. The Brute walked towards Honey.

As he did, Honey saw that the older boy’s prick was standing free of his trousers. Honey’s breath caught. The Brute was much bigger than Rag—around _and_ lengthways.

 ‘So, Honey, I hear you’re quite the talented little boywhore. Eh?’ He smiled again. ‘I can always use a boy with talent.’

He picked up a thin loaf of bread from the table, and held it out to Honey. It was only just longer than the boy’s member.  It was also more food than Bryony had seen in days.

‘There’s more than this to be had, little rat.  I’ve got rooms full of food.  But I only give to them that please me. Would you like to please me?’

Honey wasn’t sure about that. He’d heard enough of the Brute and his tastes to wonder if his pleasure wouldn’t turn out to be as dangerous a thing as his rage. _I have rooms full of food._ Honey didn’t need to be a Fitch to know that was a lie. But he very much wanted that bread.

This was Honey’s first real dilemma, and it went like this: on the one hand, there was the Brute, standing over Honey with his cock in one hand and the loaf in the other. There was the Brute, and all he might bestow on Honey if the boy obeyed, and all he might do to Honey if he refused. And there was Honey’s own, terrible hunger—the mind-destroying, all-devouring craving that awakened him each morning and tormented him late into the night.

On the other, there was the memory, fainter with each passing year, of the woman who must have been his mother. Whoever his mother had been, and however much she must have hated Honey to cast him into a hell like this, he somehow knew, down to the core of his being, that she would not have wanted him to get on his knees for this boy.

But his mother was only a memory—if that (often Honey wondered if his mother wasn’t just a dream, if he hadn’t really been born in the darkness under the Tower). Hunger and fear, on the other hand—there was no denying their reality. They were the only realities in the rat-warrens.

He wrestled a moment longer, but he could already feel the choice slipping away from him. In the end, the hunger won.  The hunger always won.

Honey knelt and opened his mouth.

First of all there was the smell. Pungent and ripe, like the slimy cheeses that sometimes appeared in the rations. Then there was the heat of it—hot as a coal it felt on Honey’s lips. Then the feel of it—silky-smooth on the outside, but hard as bone underneath. Last of all was the taste—salty and strange and unpleasant, like meat that had spoiled.

He did the best he could: first blowing, and then licking and then taking the head into his mouth; slathering it all over with his tongue; hollowing his cheeks and slurping. As he worked, the Brute pushed his fingers through Honey’s curls, scratching at his scalp. It was a pleasurable sensation, even if it did make Honey feel like a pet animal.

‘I think I’ll make a favourite of you. Would you like that, little rat?’ His voice was soft, contemplative, as though he were talking more to himself than to Honey.

Honey tried to nod and the bobbing motion pushed more of the older boy’s engorged organ down his throat. His gorge rose, but he forced it down again. He didn’t want his teeth pulled out.

_Breathe through your nose. Keep sucking and breathe through your nose._

His mouth was so stretched it felt as though it were tearing at the corners, yet he had barely taken half of the Brute’s cock.  He brought his hands up to rub along the rest of the shaft, but the Brute slapped them away.

‘No hands, ratling.  I said to use your mouth.’

Honey tried, but he was sure if he took any more he would pass out. The older boy sighed, evidently losing his patience.  Gripping Honey’s head in his rough hands, he begun to thrust.

 

⁂

 

When Bryony woke for a second time, he could still taste the salt of the Brute’s seed on his tongue. He wrapped his arms around himself and shifted closer to the witchlight. It wasn’t real fire, but he felt better for it all the same.


	3. The Grey Garden

On the thirteenth day they came to the lychfields.

First it was gravestones, jutting from the ground like rotten teeth—rank upon rank of them, tottering and leaning and half-sinking into the sludge. Mouldering sepulchres, adorned with bones and leering skulls, breached the cloudy surface like the petrified skeletons of giant fish. Then, emerging with jarring abruptness from the mists ahead, there was a wall of dark, uneven stones, weather-worn and crusted with moss, and shored at the bottom by a high bank of earth. Above the row of snaggle-toothed spikes that crowned the wall dead trees snarled their knotted fingers in the fog and the heads of crumbling monuments glowered forebodingly down at the party. The ossuary chapel itself—the first intact building Bryony had seen in the marshes— rested atop a twisting spine of rock that loomed over the boneyard like the bent stump of a gargantuan tree.

A Grey Garden.  The folk of Dunmire had spoken shudderingly of these places, once hallowed resting-places of the departed, now wellsprings of corruption and darkness that stippled this infested land like cankers on a plague-corpse.

The pallid sun was sinking onto the iron barbs like a head impaled. Night was drawing in. There was no dry ground—or even wet ground—in sight, only green viscid water that lapped around your ankles and slowly froze you from your toe-tips to your nose. Too bone-weary to go any further, they all dreaded the prospect of sleeping in the slime. Nor did they much like the idea of spending the night in the chapel. Even if the stories the townsmen told were no more than that, the place had an evil look, and none of them had forgotten the slouching shapes in the mist.

It was, however, one or the other.

Sister Eudeline favoured the chapel, as did Alaris, and Orrin, predictably, parroted her. Lia was against it, though she sounded uncertain. Colmag was in no state to voice an opinion either way. The trow had started coughing on the sixth day and the cough had steadily worsened with each slow mile of fog and drizzle and cold marshwater.  By the thirteenth day she was feverish, her brown face a bright, coppery colour, breaths coming shallow and irregular.

Tam hemmed and hawed, but in the end thought the worse of it. There were sharp words.

‘Ynara,’ Alaris said at last, ‘what do the bones say?’

The witch took the pouch from around her neck and carefully poured the bones onto a half-submerged block of masonry.  Crouching down, she shuffled and stirred them until they formed into patterns that apparently meant something to her, though to Bryony their arrangement was just as chaotic as before.

‘Danger if we go. Danger if we stay.’

Bryony snorted. ‘Well that’s fucking helpful, isn’t it?’

The witch glared up at him.  ‘I say no. Place of bones is not for the living. What say you, crow-people?’

This last was directed at the two northerners, who were squatting in the paltry shelter of a leaning stone column. The woman eyed the grey walls with their leering death’s-heads, and shook her own.  That was three votes against.

As always, they looked to Bryony last.  He considered how he was to answer.  If he said no, they might think him a craven. If he said yes, that too might be taken as weakness. He sighed. Ordinarily he wouldn’t think twice about staying in a place so obviously touched by necromanty, but thirteen days of rain and mud had worn him down. If his pride was going to suffer anyway, it might as well be indoors.  ‘I say yes. If we’re going to be killed by some horrific bog-creature, we can at least die with a roof over our heads.’

‘Auld nae-face has a point’, Tam allowed, though the words must have tasted like acid drops. ‘That wall leuks solit eneuch. A’d rather fight an enemy with stone under ma feet and at ma back than oot in this muck.’

‘I say no’, the boneseer repeated.

‘You don’t get to vote twice, Ynara’, Alaris said quietly, looking tired and strained and aged beyond her years.

In the end, it was Colmag that forced the matter. ‘Another night in this might do for ‘er, I reckon’, Orrin said, watching as Lia dabbed at the small woman’s brow with a cloth that was already soaked through.

 

On the southern side of the graveyard the grassy bank swelled into an arch, lined with scrolled stonework and studded with skulls.  Tam’s claymore made short work of the rusted chain that held the wrought-iron gates. As they passed through the tunnel, the witch-fire guttered and died.

Tam stopped still. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘leuks like A’ve changed ma mind after a’.’

‘Come on Tam’, Alaris said.  Stone’ll be as good a bulwark as lychlight.’

Within, the garden was no less grim than it had appeared from without. Black bats of enormous size hung like cankerous fruit from dead, blackened boughs. Their beady eyes opened as the company passed by; hundreds of tiny yellow lamps watching them silently and hungrily. Among the graven headstones and ornate mausolæa loomed statues of robed figures with barbed wings and skulls for faces, mist clinging to their feet like clouds about high mountain peaks. They cast long shadows in the light of evening.

 ‘Must feel like home to you’, Bryony said to Sister Eudeline.  The priestess only sniffed.

In truth, for all his feigned nonchalance, Bryony was as unnerved by the place as the rest of them. Ordinarily the darkness _was_ homely to him; but this was a different darkness from that of the Tower. This was not a holy, living darkness, but a foul, festering gloom of decay and death—and dead things had no Shadow.

The ascent to the chapel was a perilous one. A sheer staircase of half-eroded steps curled around the craggy pillar like a parasitic worm, twisting like a corkscrew: now right, now left, now turning back on itself, now diving through the rock in a narrow, dank tunnel. Any guardrail had long rotted away: there was nothing between them and the precipitous drop on the outward side. ‘But æ foot wrang,’ Tam huffed, ‘and ye c’n join them below.’

The chapel itself clung tenuously to the very summit of the outcropping, seeming as though it might at any moment slip off and break apart on the tombstones beneath. The brown corpse of a climbing plant clad the granite walls like the mesh-stockings of a dancing girl. The door, made of a dark wood that was still sound, despite its age and abandonment, was fortunately unlocked and unbarred. The interior of the shrine showed remarkably little sign of spoilage or defilement. It seemed even the animals avoided this place. The windows were of stained glass; most had been smashed. The few intact showed scenes of death and resurrection—intended, no doubt, to be comforting, but now only horrifying. In place of columns were towers of skulls and over the centre of the nave hung an immense chandelier of bones, radiating spines which dripped along the ribbing of the vaulted ceiling.

Ynara regarded these macabre ornamentations with revulsion. ‘What kind of people were they that built this place?  To use the bones of their ancestors in this way…’ She shook her head and made an emphatic sign toward the high black altar at the rear of the chapel. ‘They must have been evil.’

 ‘No, not evil’, Sister Eudeline said quietly. ‘Just wrong. Their church was a sister to our own, though they always had a tendency to place...undue emphasis on certain doctrines... Of course, all that ended with the Heresiarch’s deceit and the War of Apostasy.’ She sounded as if she had been transported back across the months and miles to her cosy classroom in Demaris. The priestess shook her head and sighed and went over to a window. She peered through a jagged hole in the patterned glass, brows pulled slightly together in a contemplative expression. ‘These were townlands once.  There were houses and orchards and fields of tilled earth. Before the evil came from beyond the mountains.’

Laar spat on the floor. ‘This is ill talk. Leave the dead in their graves.’

 

They made their beds on the floor: cold, unyielding stone softened slightly by the damp moss that sprouted from the cracks. Orrin’s tinderbox was at last put to use to make a small fire. The figures in the mosaics on the walls seemed to stretch and move in the flame’s inconstant glow. On the wall above Bryony’s bedroll he noticed a painted symbol which, depending on how you looked at it, was either a star with ten points, a sun with ten rays or a wheel with ten spokes. The Decagram. Underneath it were more signs, signs which sent a slow trickle of fear down Bryony’s back. It seemed lyches were not the only threat to haunt these blighted lands. The sooner they reached the mountains, the better.

Ynara plied Colmag with herbs from the pouch she wore at her waist—boneset and elderflower, if Bryony remembered his poison-lore aright. Sister Eudeline sang prayers in a reedy soprano. By that point the trow was raving and mumbling even less comprehensibly than usual. Bryony doubted the prayers would do her any good, but the medicine seemed to help. After a time she quieted, and the rest of the party was able to get some sleep.

Night brought a harder rain and a screaming wind that howled through the chapel, making it seem as if all the unquiet dead were being dragged from their graves at once. Tam and Laar barred the doors, and stacked two pews against them as a makeshift barricade. This endeavour proved well worth their while, for it was not long before shuffling footsteps could be heard outside, and the door started to judder under repeated, relentless blows. The shrieking wind mingled with the moans of the lyches and amplified them. It sounded as though a veritable army of the unliving were outside the chapel.

‘Well’, Orrin said, in a voice that wobbled slightly, ‘thank the Brightlord we’re in here and they’re out there.’

The words had scarcely left his lips when there came a stony scraping from the rear of the chapel. They turned to see the front of the altar fall away, revealing steps that sank down into the gloom. No one spoke.

Then there came a new sound, rising from the shadowed depths. Metal rasping over stone. There was something down in the crypt.

Laar, who had been on watch, and so was already armed, shouldered his spear, while the others scrambled for their own weapons. They waited.

They didn’t have to wait long. Man-sized shadow-shapes separated from the solid darkness of the crypt’s entrance, pulled themselves upright and began to lope toward the party, the grating, nails-on-a-blackboard sound advancing with them.

Laar pulled back his arm and threw his spear at the dim figures. The long birch shaft with its obsidian point whistled through the air, cleaving clean through the first three unliving to emerge into the light. The northron gave a shout of triumph, but the lyches did not fall. They kept moving, joined together like chunks of meat on a skewer. Legs shuffling in tandem, they formed a grotesque corpse-centipede. More swaying forms welled up from the darkness behind. With a grunt, Laar unhooked his axe from his belt, moving to stand beside Alaris. The captain’s face was grim. They watched the lyches stagger into the unsteady light, as the flame of the fire flickered and flared, painting huge, hideous shadows on the chapel walls.

These lyches were like none Bryony had seen before. They bore arms; or rather, arms were affixed to them: bolted onto their wrists where their hands should have been, driven into the flesh of their forearms, splitting it to the elbow, and bound with iron bands. Some had barb-studded clubs, some flat-headed mattocks, others long, squared swords with flared tips; large, rusted hooks, hinged claws, serrated saw-blades and simple spikes—all had been bound to the lyches, iron to flesh. The lyches were armoured also, plates of metal screwed haphazardly to their desiccated grey bodies and heads encased in iron helmets, some little more than grilles, others enclosing the head completely, save for an opening for the mouth. Behind each lych dragged a blood-rusted chain, dangling like tails. These things had been restrained, but somehow broke free.

The lyches approached limpingly, lumpingly, long, sinewy arms dragging on the floor from the weight of their weapons, their stink rolling before them like an almost tangible barrier of nauseating foulness. They approached with the slow inevitability of an oncoming tide; but once they got near the tight huddle of living, the walking cadavers threw themselves ponderously into action, raising their weapon-limbs and emitting hoarse, hollow groans.

With a high-pitched metallic shriek, Dracofex dove into a cluster of lyches, beating at their heads with his wings, crunching their bones under his steel teeth, shearing their limbs with his razor-edge talons. Kaidi was hastily stringing her bow, while Orrin, one leg still in his sleeping-sack, was loading his rifle. Alaris had her pistol already primed, and took out two lyches in quick succession, their heads misting into blood.

So many lyches at such close quarters would have made prime targets for Colmag and her repeating blunderbuss, Bryony reflected, but the trow was still prone on her bedroll. Lia hovered over her protectively, the girl’s eyes wide as she watched the unfolding combat.

Bryony drew his own curved shortsword from the sheath across his back, and positioned himself at the edge of the party, a little apart from the others, so he had space to manoeuvre. A lych, with three hinged hooks at the end of one arm, and what looked like an oversized butcher’s cleaver on the other, came toward him.

Opting first to disable its attack capability, he swung his sword at the arm that held the cleaver, aiming to sever it just below the elbow. But when his blade connected, it hit metal rather than flesh, and rebounded with a clang.  At first Bryony was dumbfounded, but then he saw there were large iron bolts embedded in the sinewy lychflesh—it was these that had turned aside his blow.

Then it was the lych’s turn. It swung for Bryony with the cleaver, and at the same time tried to gore him with its claws. Bryony jumped aside, and the cleaver crashed into a tower of skulls, scattering them everywhere. While the creature was still trying to retrieve the cleaver from where it had lodged, batting at the skulls with its claw-hand, Bryony smoothly decapitated it.

The head bounced away; the rest of the lych was undeterred. Wrenching the cleaver out of the bone-pillar, it continued to swing blindly at Bryony, who stepped away each time. It was a little like dancing with an extremely slow, extremely clumsy, partner, one who just happened to be trying to carve you into mincemeat.

The trouble was, it was hard to get a clean strike at an area of its body not covered with metal. As he was considering his next strike, there was a sharp crack and the lych’s left calf disappeared in a blast of powder. The lych tipped over with a wet thud.

Bryony looked across the room to see Orrin lowering his rifle. The young man grinned and nodded at Bryony. Bryony did not bother returning the gesture, instead glancing down at the (mostly) motionless lych. He placed a foot on its back to hold it and sliced off both arms at the shoulder. As he did so, he noticed the chain it had been trailing was tethered directly to its exposed spinal column. He had never heard of lyches being modified in this way—or had this been done to them while they were still alive? That thought gave him a small shiver, but he pushed it away. More unliving were staggering in his direction.

Though their blows were slow and clumsy, the weapons fastened to their arms did terrific damage on impact—where they hit, heavy wood furniture crumpled, and stone tiles shattered. Bryony shuddered to think what they would do to flesh. As a Ghostblade he wore no armour, so, as always, the trick was to hit the enemy without getting hit oneself. The second part was easy enough; the first was more difficult—compared to how it was with normal lyches, at least. The trouble was, these lyches had so much metal on them—in them, as though their bones were of iron—that Bryony couldn’t be sure his strikes wouldn’t be deflected. This was a task for shadow, not steel.

Mentally reciting a battle mantra, Bryony tapped into his Shadow, the dark side of his soul that was the source of his power. His heartbeat slowed. He felt the familiar tingle run through his arms and hands. There was a stab of pain at his temples, and then, whispering out of the air, coalescing from nothing, came his ghostblades: twin curved swords, each about as long as a man’s hand and forearm, bright as quicksilver and black as starless night. There was a slight haziness to them, as though they were not entirely there, as though it were only the outline or reflection of a blade one was seeing. Those they had slain could vouch for their reality, however—and their effectiveness.

Ghostblades—the close-combat operatives of the Tower were named after the weapons they bore. Bryony’s blades had been his most loyal companions these past nine years. They were his treasured instruments, just as he was an instrument of the Midnight Priory. Though, unlike swords fashioned of steel, they had wills of their own—striking at an enemy _before_ Bryony planned it, moving to parry a blow he hadn’t even seen coming. Wielding his ghostblades, empowered by his Shadow, he felt super-alert, energised, constantly on the edge of action, his speed and agility pushed to the absolute limit. It was exhilarating, though it was also dangerous to remain in this state for too long. Bryony was seasoned enough to know his limits; even so, aching muscles and an aching head would be the price he paid afterward. But while in the thick of a mêlée, the blades were invaluable. They had saved his skin more than once. Sometimes he even had an awareness of something residing in the blades, something that approached a consciousness —sharp and cold and alien. He could almost hear them speaking to him, a low, susurrating murmur that hovered just on the edge of his heightened senses. He didn’t need to understand the words to know their desire, however. They thirsted for blood. Bryony would be glad to slake their thirst.

Bryony could take in only snatches of the fight beyond his immediate engagement: the crisp retort of Alaris’ pistol and the swish of her sabre, the twang of Kaidi’s bow, the brassy screams of Dracofex. Orrin, engaged at close quarters, was thrusting with his bayonet, as was Laar with his spear, while Tam felled two lyches at a time with immense sweeps of his longsword. They formed a loose cluster around Lia and Sister Eudeline, who were unarmed, and Colmag, who was incapacitated.

Bryony hated fighting the unliving. Half a Ghostblade’s power was in terror and pain—lyches felt neither. Poison was useless against them. They had no souls to rend, no minds to sunder. Nor could they be killed with a single well-placed dagger.

That said, Bryony’s spectral blades sliced through even the lyches’ toughened flesh like a hot knife through...well, through flesh, he supposed. _Like butchering cattle,_ Bryony thought, and set to work.

_Strike fast and sure, then retreat into the shadows. Strike again when the moment is right, and again withdraw._

Ducking their swings, diving between their shambling forms, Bryony unleashed a whirlwind flurry of blades, shearing through metal and meat as through rotten linen. The fight was both easy—easier than battling human opponents, and at the same time more difficult. The lyches may have been the antithesis of skilled fighters, but they were numerous and relentless, and very, very hard to kill. Fighting them was deeply counterintuitive, and required Bryony to go against years of training and experience. He was constantly pulling himself back from a sweep or thrust that would to a human have been lethal, or at least disabling, but to a lych barely an interruption. The delicate blade-dance was all but pointless. There was no finesse to it: it was simply a matter of carving their wasted bodies into pieces too small to do any harm.

Beside him Ynara swung her bone-sickle.  Each lych it so much as scratched seemed to harden, hair-fine cracks rapidly spreading across its surface, before it crumbled to dust. Laar had retrieved his spear and was stabbing at the unliving from a crouching position, Kaidi firing over his head. Tam and Orrin, a little way off from the others, were backed against a column and between the two of them were keeping the unliving in the west side of the chapel at bay.

One of the grave-cattle blundered directly into the fire, scattering brands and cinders, and immediately the spaces of the chapel were swallowed by huge swathes of shadow, the remaining light patchy and fitful.

The others were dismayed; lyches, however, did not need light to see by—and nor did Bryony.

He slipped into a pool of shadow, cloaking himself in the darkness, feeling it settle around him like a comfort-worn blanket. With the Shadow enhancing his strength he ran partway up a wall, then swooped down, decapitating two lyches and knocking over a third with his feet, rolling forward to drive both blades into the back of one who was moving toward Ynara.

The tide of unliving had abated somewhat. The floor was strewn with bodies and body parts—fortunately none belonged to the party. A well-aimed shot by Alaris brought the huge bone chandelier crashing down on a clump of lyches with a terrific clattering din.

That brought some respite: enough to see they were caught in a trap of their own making. Before them was the crypt ready to disgorge horrors of kinds and quantities unguessed-at, while behind them the way out of the chapel was also blocked with lyches.

For now, however, the immediate present was giving them enough to deal with. Bryony flipped his grip on the right-hand blade, and rammed it down the open gullet of a lych. They lych’s teeth closed about his wrist, but fortunately did not pierce his gloves. He yanked his hand back, splitting open its neck and lower jaw.

 

When the last of the corpses in the chapel were no more than that, they waited, all exhausted; none of them daring to relax their guard.

‘Well,’ Alaris said, wiping her brow, ‘that seems to be the last of them.’ She kicked away a severed hand that was crawling up her boot. It hit the wall with a splat.

‘These are no mere lyches.’ Sister Eudeline, bending over a semi-intact, though thankfully motionless, lych, fascination inscribed plainly on her face. ‘Someone _made_ these things.’

Tam hawked a gob of blood onto the floor. ‘Made ‘em, and got torn limb from limb, most like. Left ‘em for the entertainin’ o’ us merry travellers.’

Laar was grunting, trying to dislodge his spear from where it was stuck, still buried in the torsos of three lyches. He put one foot on the first lych’s chest and tugged at the free end of the shaft. The spear gradually emerged, accompanied by a wet, suctiony sound.

‘I wonder’, Ynara began; but what she wondered none of them would ever know, for just at that moment a new sound rose from the crypt.

Heavy, regular thuds came from below their feet, as of drumbeats, or… footsteps.

Something was down there in the dark, something _much_ bigger than a lych. Its shape could not be guessed, but up from the gloomy depths of the undercroft there rose the sound of fœtid air rattling through rusted metal, and with each breath came an eye-stinging stench: a smell of rottenness and plague and every unclean thing Bryony could imagine.

The thuds moved closer, and Bryony held his heart in his throat... but whatever it was, it was too big to fit through the opening. There was an ear-shredding scraping and then a bestial groan of pain or frustration. It seemed to retreat, and his breath puffed out.

Then there was another bellow, and a sound of air being displaced as the beast rushed forward, ramming itself against the lower entrance to the stairs. With each charge the small chapel shook, windows shattered, and plaster dust and splinters of bone rained down from the ceiling. The tremors were accompanied by the distinct sound of cracking stone.

 ‘We need to get out of here’, Orrin said, wide-eyed. ‘Sooner or later that thing’s going to batter its way through.’

The windows weren’t an option—they opened onto empty space. The only way out was through the doors—the doors currently being buckled inwards by the sheer weight of the mass of unliving behind them.

Alaris addressed the priestess, who was still examining the bodies. ‘Sister Eudeline, can you rekindle the witch-lantern?’

‘I—well, I don’t know really… I assume it was some unholy magic of this place that extinguished it to begin with, I—'

‘ _Can you rekindle it?’_

 _‘_ Yes! I mean—I think so. If we can get past the gate.’

Alaris huffed. ‘That’ll have to do. Tam, Laar—drag those pews away, then be ready to charge in once the doors open. Kaidi, Orrin—set up a firing line so you can cover us. Sister and Lia—load the dragon with as much of our things as it can carry, then bring Colmag. Shadowblood, Ynara—protect them.’

The moment the pews were removed the doors burst inward, as if struck by a battering-ram. Lyches spilled onto the floor. They didn’t attempt to rise, just dragged themselves toward the party like leprous cripples, finger searching out the cracks in the tiles, teeth gnashing on air.

‘Into them!’ Alaris roared, and into them they went.

The lyches about the portal reeled back under the force of their lightning-onslaught, as water cast back by a stone. Then it was a close and bitter fight down the narrow stair, dancing between the twin perils of the lyches and the hundred-foot drop, and out into the midst of the unliving throng gathered at its base. The combat was frenetic, but Bryony took no pleasure in it. There was no joy, no art to fighting these shuffling cadavers. No symphony of screams to be torn from their voiceless throats, no tapestry of torment to be woven from their nerveless sinew. At least the ones out here didn’t have weapons, and so were reduced to swinging their arms like bludgeons and scratching with fingernails grown into claws, biting with teeth lengthened into fangs.

He soon fell into a rhythm: one stroke across the neck to sever the head, duck to avoid their blows, dart around behind them and bring both blades down in twin sweeps to remove the arms. After that they were mostly harmless, though he generally cut off one or both legs to be safe. The trouble was, there was just so damn _many_ of them. Fell one, and three more took its place. Human fighters tended to spread out, but lyches swarmed together in an inseparable, flailing sea of necrotic flesh that left Bryony precious little room to manoeuvre.

The moons above were huge, bloated and pale and very bright. The graveyard was swarming with unliving, the ground itself appearing to writhe with shadowy figures. Bryony breathed out, then in, and readied his blades.

From the foot of the crag to the tunnel through which they had entered, the company carved a bloody path with blade and musket-ball. Dracofex flew overhead, wings straining under the weight of the bags and sacks slung around it. More lyches swarmed up behind them as they advanced, and Bryony and Ynara were hard-pressed. One of the tomb-spawn, bigger and faster than its fellows, as if it still kept some of the quickness of its former life, broke from the line of lyches that surrounded them, advancing on the party. This was unusual. Lyches usually stuck close together.

Bryony watched as it loped toward him, calculating the best way to despatch it—then a swift-moving blur from his periphery crashed into his side, almost bringing him down. He had let himself become distracted by the big lych, and now he had another one at his throat.

With Shadow-augmented dexterity, he slipped out of its grasp. Once he got some distance, he let it shamble toward him, arms outstretched. He twirled his left blade, then brought it down in a diagonal sweep. He sliced the lych in two, cleaving it from its left shoulder to its hip. The top half fell backwards, while the creature’s legs, still attached to what remained of its torso, stumbled forward, into Bryony. He kicked them away.

He turned to face the big lych, but it was already right in front of him—how had it moved so quickly? He tried to back away, but the creature got its arms, inhumanly strong, around him, squeezing like a vice. Bryony struggled vainly, but all at once it was in his face, filling his vision. He could see the twin cavities where its nose once was, the lipless mouth, shrunk back to expose the roots of the teeth, the dead, glassy eyes burning with a hollow fire.

His arms were pinned by his side, and it was too close for a proper swing anyway. The lych’s jaws crashed together—its teeth caught on his veil, almost biting off his nose. Bryony’s heart stuttered—but then something bright and heavy crashed into the creature’s head, and it staggered back.

He turned to find Sister Eudeline, lacking a proper weapon, was swinging her lantern on its chain like a war-flail. He had to give the old shrew points for resourcefulness.

Turning back, he drove his blade up into the lych’s chest, feeling only slight resistance as his ghostblade clove through its ribcage. He ripped the blade up through the cartilage of its neck and the bone of its skull. Then he sliced down with his other blade, again and again, alternating between them, until the top half of the lych’s body was so much shredded meat.

This may have been mere butchery to Bryony, but the Shadow within him revelled in the carnage, graceless as it was.

_Master of the Living Night, look down upon the bloodstained earth. In Thy Name I have sown terror with my right hand and destruction with my left. In Thy Name I have spilled blood, broken bones, torn flesh. In Thy Name I have flayed minds, rent souls, ravaged spirits. Master of the Living Night, look down upon the bloodstained earth and accept these my offerings to Thee._

As soon as they were through the gate, the witch-lantern, now a little dented, blazed into life once more. The blue flame burned bright, its light enveloping the party in a shimmering aura that was just visible to the naked eye. Lyches crowded around the edge, pressing against the barrier like children at the window of a confectioner’s shop. _I suppose that’s what we must be to them—tasty sweetmeats just waiting to be devoured._

Orrin eyed the lantern. ‘That ain’t gunna go out again, is it?’

‘It shouldn’t’, Sister Eudeline said. ‘But let’s not wait around to find out.

Then Lia gave a cry. ‘Look—the chapel!’

A torrent of green lightning was crackling from the chapel’s steeple into the night sky, the mist swirling around it in a hellish maelstrom. And...was that a bell tolling?

‘Well A’ll be buggered.’ Tam said. ‘Yon lightshow must be drawin’ every lyke from a mile-round.’

‘Like moths to a flame’, Lia whispered.

‘Not only lyches’, Bryony said. 

When the others turned to him, he elaborated. ‘Those signs on the wall—they said that these lands are under the protection of the Circle.’

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’, Lia said. ‘The Circle hunt the unliving…’

‘Unfortunately, that isn’t all they hunt.’ Alaris sucked her teeth.  ‘All the more reason to keep moving. Come on.’ She started forward, but then stopped, eying with unease the dozens of lyches that stood in the way.

The priestess coughed. ‘If, ah, you will allow me, Lady Alaris.’ With that, she strode forward and, raising the lantern (now slightly dented) in her right hand, put her left hand into the flame, and seemed to pull a part of the fire away. It shone for a moment like a tiny star in her hand, a still dancing of light, impervious to the rain. Then she flung it into the herd of unliving. The flame exploded in a nimbus of fire and light that set ablaze every lych it touched. They fell with low, keening sighs, crawling aimlessly through the mud until nothing but ash remained.

Orrin gave a slow whistle. Sister Eudeline sniffed, looking pleased, though she did her best not to show it. ‘Well, let’s not dally. We have many miles still to cover before dawn. Stay within the lantern-light.’


	4. Games

_Under-Tower_

Honey suspected the only reason the Brute let him wear clothes was that he enjoyed tearing them off. Whenever the fancy took him he would grab Honey, ripping apart the younger boy’s thin shift like so much paper. Then Honey would be forced to his knees, wincing as they banged against the hard floor, and the Brute’s cock would be slapping him in the face, slick and steely and leaving wet trails where it touched.

‘Suck it well,’ the Brute would say, ‘cos that’s all the preparation you’ll be getting.’

Sometimes Honey didn’t even get that—the Brute did it dry, just to hear him scream.

Other times, when he was sitting resplendent on his ramshackle throne, he would call Honey up to him, unfasten his breeches and then, in front of Lump and all the others—the whole leering, hooting, hollering crowd of them—he would sit Honey down on his cock, and just leave him there, impaled on the Brute’s prick for them all to see. ‘Cock-warming’, he called it, which made no sense at all, his cock being the warmest part of him.

It wasn’t so bad at first—indeed, humiliation aside, Honey found it a welcome change from having his poor boycunt pounded to shreds. But by the time half an hour or so had passed, the feeling would start building. After an hour, it was positively unbearable, and Honey would be trembling, shaking with the need to get off, to move, to do _something._ Only when Honey was sobbing and wailing, feeling he would _die_ if he didn’t _move,_ would the Brute have Honey ride him to completion.

And that was just in the youth’s ordinary mood. If he was in a mean way—and that was at least half the time; more if someone had been Taken recently (everyone knew how it enraged the Brute that the Watchers always passed him over)—but if he was feeling nasty (Honey could always tell from his smile), then the Brute became fearfully inventive.

His torments were of two varieties: toys, and games.

To begin with, there was the small, ridged plug with a flared end that the Brute would slide into Honey’s arse when he wasn’t being used (have to keep you nice and open for me, the Brute said). Then there were the polished wood balls that the Brute would push up his rear passage, one at a time. If one fell out, Honey would be flogged. There was the thick pole with knobs all along its length, that the Brute would plunge in and out, till Honey was sure he must be ripped and ruined beyond repair.

On and on it went, ceaseless innovations of torment, until Honey had become intimately familiar with every item that hung on the Brute’s rack of not-weapons. It was no wonder, Honey thought, that the Brute’s boys never lasted long.

The games were worse.

They played hunting games, and hiding games, where Honey would have to pretend to escape, and the Brute would pretend to chase him; only it wasn’t really pretend for the Brute, Honey could tell, and there was nothing pretend about the terror that seized his heart as he sprinted down the dark passages, the Brute behind him, roaring like something closer to a beast than a person. And there was nothing pretend about the brutish, beastlike way he raped Honey when he caught him. They played games that tested how much pain Honey could endure before his mind gave him over to the embrace of oblivion. They played competitive games, where Honey would have to race against other ratlings to see who could make their master come first, or who could swallow the most loads in a set time.

One day the Brute came up with a game where Honey, tied up with ropes, would be hung from the ceiling, and the boys would stand around him in a ring, cocks at the ready. Trussed up like a carcass in an abattoir, with ankles tied to his wrists and wrists tied behind his back, Honey would be twisted round and round, until he wanted to throw up, and whichever cock he stopped in front of he would have to suck dry, and hold the load in his mouth as he was spun again. If he swallowed it, or spilled any, he was beaten.

But the worst, what Honey dreaded most, was when the Brute was feeling generous. ‘Gather round, lads’, he’d say, after an especially good haul or a victory over another gang, ‘the Chief’s decided to give you a treat.’

They all had their own boys, of course, but they all coveted Honey. It wasn’t just that he was pretty, though Honey knew he was (and how often he had cursed his mother for bearing a son who looked more like a daughter). It was that he was the Brute’s Bitch. Special; off-limits.

Except when the Brute was feeling generous.

Prick after prick Honey took, load after load, until his face was a slimy mess and he could no longer feel the lower half of his body. Sometimes, mercifully, he would pass out after a while, coming to in a pool of seed with every breath an agony. Other times he would remain awake, but would feel as if his mind were floating out of his body, as if it were all happening to someone else, and he was just an observer.

He saw the boys humping away at his prone body, the faint rise and fall of his chest that was the only sign of life. He saw the others, crowding around, jostling to be next in line or simply content to watch as they frigged themselves. One of these, lurking at the back, was Studge.

Studge was the Brute’s poisoner: an unaccountably chubby boy (it was whispered he ate human flesh) with an expressionless face grotesquely scarred by weeping sores and pustules. He never touched Bryony; he only liked to watch, and as he watched he would reach under his rolls of fat to diddle his cock, which was short and stubby as the rest of him. Honey hated the slippery feel of his eyes—wide and filmy like those of a cave-fish.  He hated the things he could almost see playing out behind them as Studge stared.

One time Studge caught Honey when the boy was coming back from the latrine pits. Honey went by ways that were little-known, whenever possible, the better to avoid the cruel jests and predatory glances of the bigger boys. He didn’t think anyone knew about this tunnel, but here Studge was, almost filling the passage with his wobbling girth. First he glanced about with too-big eyes, as if he were looking— _to see if anyone else was around,_ Honey realised with a tingle of fear. Then he trotted closer, nimble for his size, till Honey was backed against the wall of the tunnel. Studge leaned in, close enough that Honey’s nostrils were choked by his noxious breath, and the stinking pus that oozed from his sores, and he whispered things in Honey’s ear that were so vile and _wrong,_ Honey felt sick to his stomach. Desperate, he bit into the soft, waxy flesh of the bigger boy’s arm. Studge released with him a grunt more of surprise than of pain, and Honey shot off like a racing beetle, glancing over his shoulder to see if the fat boy was waddling after him. He wasn’t; he was just standing there, face blank as it ever was.

Honey ran straight to the Brute. The Brute, looking a little queasy himself when Honey repeated what Studge had said,  immediately ordered thaat Studge be brought to him. Everyone knew you didn’t touch the Brute’s boy without permission.

Studge was found and hauled before the Brute’s throne, not looking at all perturbed, until he saw the cold fury in the Brute’s eyes, and even then only the faintest glimmer of anxiety showed on the upturned moon of his face. Other retainers came and went as the Brute’s favour was granted or rescinded, but Studge was valuable. Nobody else knew medicines and poisons like he did; nobody else knew how to grow the fungi and mosses that thrived in the damp and dark, or the right times to harvest them, the right ways to combine them to make potions of healing or sleep or death.

Only when the Brute had them bring his new whip, the one made of steel chains with sharp bits of twisted metal at the ends, did Studge’s fleshy features warp in a grimace of fear. He clasped his fat, wormlike fingers together, babbling nonsensical pleas, apologies, until one of the boys holding him punched him in the gut, then in the face. Studge doubled over, one hand clutching his belly, the other holding his face, where blood was starting to stream from his nose.

The Brute ambled over to the whimpering boy, wearing a bright, toothy smile. ‘You seen this, piggy? Got it in the latest weapon ration. Haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.’ He whirled the whip experimentally a few times, the polished steel flashing in the torchlight. The Brute liked his theatrics, even when he was angry. ‘I think I’ll call it…’ His eyes glittered. ‘ _Fat-flayer.’_

He pronounced the words slowly, with relish, while around them the crowd whooped and crowed.

‘On your knees, piggy’, the Brute said, pointing an imperious finger. ‘It’s time you learnt not to touch what isn’t yours.’ 

Slowly, Studge knelt, belly quivering, tears rolling down his puffy cheeks. The whip twirled.

_Once. Twice. Thrice. Four times. Five times._

Then all of a sudden the Brute snapped his arm forward, and the chain-lengths scattered over Studge’s bent form. Cloth and skin ripped; blood sprayed across the stone floor. A dim memory: Honey’s mother had kept hogs. The sound they made when their throats were cut was the sound Studge was making now. Studge made no attempt to fight back, or to flee; he just rolled around on his belly, emitting piggy squeals as the steel teeth of the whip found him over and over again, freshets of blood dribbling over his fleshy crevasses.

It took four boys to carry him away, when it was over. It didn’t make Honey feel any better.


	5. The Circle

_Shwack._

Leyn supposed others would find it disgusting, the wet, ripping sound lyches made as they were dismembered. To his ears it was sweeter than music.

He brought his blade down in an overhead swing, and another lych exploded into a shower of blood and viscera. The scented cloth in his visor absorbed most of what would otherwise, he knew, be an overpowering stench. Two more lyches lumbered towards him, and he felled them with a single crossways blow.

Around the graveyard similar scenes were playing out—lyches carved to shreds by men in bright silver armour and scarlet surcoats. When they had arrived these foul fields had been swarming with unliving. But the knights of the Circle were slowly and surely returning the dead to their rest.

As a background to this play of gore and steel, he heard the chanting of the battle-clerics as they strove to lift up the hearts of the righteous. Catching a breath, Leyn joined in their rhythmic sword-hymns, rejoicing as gouts of purifying flame descended from the sky in answer to the Incanter’s appeals, cleaving the rotten fog and scouring a fiery swathe through the fields of lychflesh. The reek of corruption was burned away by the righteous smell of seared flesh.

As ever, at the forefront of the assault and in the thick of the fight was Knight-Captain Cenric. Standing head and shoulders above the knights around him, his huge two-handed greatsword traced arcs of red light through the grey dawn air. His blade bore the Consecration of Fire, and every lych he hewed burst into flames, and was cinder by the time its parts reached the ground.

Leyn’s own blade was plain, as yet, though of good truesteel nonetheless: sturdy enough to balance a boulder’s weight without buckling, and sharp enough to slice a candle in half without disturbing the flame. One day—soon, he hoped—he would have saved up enough ecclesiarchal scrip to get a blade-blessing of his own. There were many to choose from:  the Consecration of Ice, which froze enemies, or of Light, which blinded them, or Lightning, which shocked them, or Frenzy, which drove them mad. Many knights opted for the Consecration of Wind, which made one’s blade swift as a stinging hornet, or Aether, which made it light as a feather. Both of those took long training to get accustomed to, however, and Leyn didn’t fancy spending hours re-learning his swordplay. No, the one he wanted was the Consecration of Blood, which sapped the life-force of the foeman with every cut, cuts that would never congeal or scab over. Even a nick from a blade thus enchanted could make a man bleed to death. Each wound dealt to an enemy also healed a wound of one’s own, leeching away the foe’s life energy. A knight thus armed was practically invincible. It was a difficult one to get, though. The Church didn’t officially sanction the Blood-blessing: it was all too much redolent of hematomanty, and other such unholy blood-magics. But there were ways to come by it, if one was of an enterprising bent. Fervently as the grey brothers opposed the necromantic art, their own was dangerously close to it...

For now, he watched with appreciation as the Knight-Captain turned the unliving hordes into so much charred meat. A giant of a man, he wore a black wolfskin across his back—a token of his most illustrious deed of renown, the slaying of the hame-changing chieftain of a wolf-clan from the north, one who had united hundreds of savage tribes under his banner and led them in a bloody campaign against the Circle, sacking and razing three score mission-posts before Cenric ended his unholy crusade with one blessed blow. After that he’d flayed the barbarian’s corpse with his own belt-knife, and every foeman killed or captured had been dealt with the same, man and wolf alike. A hundred of the skins had been sent as war-trophies to the Amaranthine Tower, and were received there with some consternation and no little distaste. The others Cenric had had nailed to the walls of every Circle fane and fortress in the North, bloody warnings to the natives.

It was said the Knight-Captain had been offered a Commandry after that, and on half a hundred occasions after, but had refused each time, not wanting any position that would take him away from the frontline. He didn’t belong in a chapel, he said, getting callouses on his knees, or at a desk, getting ink-stains on his fingers. He belonged in the heat of battle, visiting Arion’s righteous vengeance upon His foes. At least, those were the words attributed to him by popular legend, and Leyn had no doubt Captain Cenric would endorse the spirit of them, if nothing else. There were many stories like that about the Wolf-bane.

Knight-Captain Cenric was at the foot of the stairs that led up the rocky spire at the centre of the garden, with his honour guard about him. As they had flown in, Leyn had seen the windows of the chapel glowing with a baleful green light, and had heard the bellows and grunts of whatever foul creature was trapped inside.

Diverting his gaze back to his immediate surroundings, Leyn made his way toward a group of unliving that were spilling out of a nearby tomb. Mykal and Wullem, two knights that belonged to Leyn’s section, followed close on his heels. Wullem was whistling as he slashed at lyches left and right, while Mykal, in between strokes, downed lyches with bolts from the pistol crossbow he held in his off-hand. Nearby were Aren and Elwyn, the half-blood twins, who were also in Leyn’s contingent. One had skin black as night and hair white as snow, the other skin pale as cream and hair like obsidian. They fought back to back, foregoing sword and shield for dual long-knives, whirling them in an unstoppable storm of carnage.

Moving through the graveyard was like fording a river, a river of unliving flesh. For the most part Leyn simply let himself be swept along by the current, but every so often he was snarled on a knot of especially determined lyches.

One that came stumbling toward him had plainly once been a woman. She had her thin, slimy hair in a bun, and was still clad in the rags of a dress. Clinging to her tattered skirts was a very small lych, child-sized.

Leyn felt a sick swoop in his stomach. He hated the little ones. Somehow they seemed to retain more of their humanity than full-grown corpses, and were thus doubly horrifying. He decapitated them both, and said a prayer for their souls as he did so.

Another lych jumped at him from atop an elaborate mausolæum. It barrelled into him with surprising force, nearly knocking him off balance. He dropped his sword and fell to one knee. The lych scrambled to its feet and loped toward him. He clenched a mailed fist and punched it in the face, sending it reeling back, falling to the ground once more. It tried to crawl away, but he strode quickly forward and stamped on its head, feeling its skull crumple beneath his steel boot.

He pulled several long, deep breaths, as he tramped back to where he had left his sword. Now that he had some respite, he realised that the thrill he normally got from a brutal mêlée was absent. In fact, he felt oddly deflated. When the news had come that the dead were stirring in the gloaminglands, his heart had leapt. All through the flight over the marshes he had been anticipating the chance to finally come to grips with a proper enemy. It had been only six months since he won his spurs, and he was eager to be blooded. So far, however, Leyn’s first real battle had proved to be hardly more challenging than training.

‘Leyn—here!’ He turned around to see that Mykal had picked up his sword. The stout knight handed it to Leyn.

Reaching out to take the weapon (and cursing himself for letting go of it in the first place—it was a knight’s first lesson that his blade was his life), Leyn felt a rush of air. He looked up to see Gripfang, his griffon, diving down to seize a hapless lych in her taloned grasp. She bit a chunk out of its face, then tore clean through its middle, dropping the remains to the ground.

‘Well done, girl!’ he shouted to her, hilting his sword in a lych’s throat. Gripfang turned her head to regard him, and gave an exultant cry. It was a sound fuller than an eagle’s screech and sharper than a lion’s roar, and more ferocious than either. The tawny fur around her beak was stained with blood, and her claws dripped gore. Circle griffons were more than beasts of burden; they fought alongside their masters when in the field, their barding keeping them well-protected, their beak and talons sharp as any blade.  All over the battlefield they circled and swooped, like massive birds of prey. Corpse after corpse was chewed up and spat out—they of course would not eat lychflesh.

He forged ahead, lyches beating uselessly at his truesteel plate. Their blows might have been the pawing of kittens, for all Leyn felt them. He bashed them away with his shield, hearing several crunches as he did so. He sighed. This was getting boring.

He looked toward the spire at the centre of the garden. It was impossible to see clearly through the fog, but there were flashes of red and green light, and great crashes and cries came echoing down from the summit. The Captain and his company must be engaged with whatever beast lurked inside the grave-chapel. _That_ was where the real fight was.

Gripfang was now a few feet ahead of him, scattering lyches with sweeps of her talons, picking them up in her beak, flying high, and letting their bodies fall to break upon the earth. Leyn whistled for her, the special whistle that told her he wanted to mount. She squawked, annoyed to be pulled away from her sport. She tossed her current plaything into the air, snapped it in two, then bounded over to Leyn.

Gripping her reins, he swung himself up into the saddle with a grunt, then squeezed her flanks with his knees to set her off. She cantered forward a few paces to get her speed, then took off, rising with powerful flaps of her broad wings. High and higher they soared, the ground and the battle rushing away beneath them.

When they got up and over the central crag, he tugged on her bridle to stop her. He squinted down at the fight unfolding below. There was Captain Cenric and his honour guard! And—there was the beast…

The doors to the chapel were hanging from their hinges in splinters, and the stones about the arch were cracked and buckled, as if there had been an explosion inside. The reason for this damage was between the chapel and the blades of the knights.

It was the vilest creature Leyn had ever laid eyes on. The sheer horror of it chilled the fire in his blood.

It was half as big as the chapel itself, and its bulk filled the narrow forecourt, forcing the knights into a perilous dance along the cliff-edge. It squatted on four legs like tree-stumps, the hindlegs somewhat thicker and shorter than the forelegs. In shape it was something like a hairless ape, swollen beyond natural proportions by the same insane, cancerous growth that pitted the sags and bulges of its pallid flesh with pustules. Even at this distance the smell was abominable. On its back, between its shoulders, was a lump the size of a boulder. Thick, pale tentacles oozed from gashes that opened like mouths in the monstrous growth.  The creature’s head could not be seen—it had on a sort of helmet of corroded copper, with holes in the front and a cruel spike on top. Leyn found he didn’t particularly _want_ to see what was underneath.

There were lacerations on the creature’s forward parts; Leyn assumed it had suffered these bashing its way out of the chapel, or from the knights, though it was lump hard to tell which wounds were fresh, the beast was so covered in blisters and red, seeping lesions.

He steered Gripfang until she was close above the roof of the sanctuary. His heartbeat thudded in his ears, throbbing in time with the beating of the griffon’s wings. This was it. This was Leyn’s hour of proving.

Not giving himself more time to think, he sheathed his sword and slipped his shield up his arm. Then he jumped.

Air whistled through the slit in his visor as he fell—only a short distance, thank the Lord, then he slammed onto the roof of the chapel, landing directly astride the peak (thank the Lord for crotch-armour as well). Then, leaning forward so as to disperse his weight, he began to clamber awkwardly along the roof, toward the front end of the chapel. First to find a sure grip for his hands, then a safe place to rest his feet…

A tile under his foot came loose; he was suddenly sliding down one side of the steep incline. His fingers scrabbled over the tiles, but couldn’t gain any purchase, and then he felt a stomach-churning emptiness below him. _Lord, help me!_

Even as his body slid over the edge, he caught hold of a stone gargoyle, which he clung to with all his might.  With difficulty, he heaved his armoured bulk back onto the roof, and resumed his forward advance. When he got to the end, he peered cautiously over the stone parapet.

The monster was just as ugly—and smelly—from the rear. The knights who stood facing it were holding the beast at bay—just; but every so often it would charge forward, bashing with its monstrous limbs or lowering its head and attempting to gore one of its assailants with the helmet-spike. Then it would retreat from the stinging steel. The knights, for their part, seemed content to needle at the beast, no doubt leery of its size and strength. A jab here, a thrust there—they were trying to wear it out, but the creature’s hideous strength showed no signs of flagging.

 _Don’t think, just do it_.

Once again, Leyn made the sign of the star with his fingers splayed on his chest, and jumped.

The initial impact knocked the breath from his lungs. Feeling his fingers sink into the clay-like flesh, he pulled himself up, until he was straddling the beast’s spine. Now that he was actually _riding_ the thing, the stench could hardly be borne. He forced down his gorge, and blinked the tears from his eyes. This was his moment. He was no fainting maid. He could do this.

So far, incredibly, it did not seem to have noticed him. He carefully slid forward, until he was astride the beast’s shoulders. Holding on to a tentacle with his shield-arm, he drew his sword, and stabbed downward, directly into the huge hump.

There was a wet, sucking sound, and then a gush of thick, noisome liquid, blasting directly into his face, through the gaps in his helmet, stinging his eyes and clogging his nostrils. He couldn’t see—but he could feel the creature beneath him bucking like a bull. Leyn tried desperately to hold on to the writhing tentacles, but they were slippery with the pus that spurted from the growth, and before he could so much as cry out, he found himself once again airborne.

He landed hard, skidding along the rocky ground until he was almost at the spire’s edge. His sword went spinning off into the void. Somehow, miraculously, he had held onto his shield, but now he let it fall, wrenching off his helm and swiping at his face, desperate to get the putrid fluid out of his eyes and nose.

‘Brother!’ Leyn looked up, still blinking furiously. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but he knew by the voice it was Mykal. How had Mykal gotten up there?

But there the knight was, hovering at the edge of the crag, atop his own emerald green griffon. He must have followed Leyn. He was holding Leyn’s sword. Mykal shouted to be heard over the howls of the beast. ‘Twice in one day, Leyn! You’re getting sloppy.’

For a second time, he tossed the sword to Leyn, and Leyn caught it. Then he told Mykal what he was going to attempt, and what he needed Mykal to do. Mykal raised his fist in acknowledgement and then he was gone, disappearing into the mist.

Leyn turned around to face the beast once more. Battered about in his armour like a cat in a cage tossed off a cliff, he could feel bright webs of pain radiating from a dozen places. But the pain was only a distraction; the fight was what mattered.

_Go for the legs…_

He went for the leg nearest him, aiming to sever it with one blow. But he had misjudged the angle, and the speed of the beast; he only struck off a black, gangrenous toe. The creature didn’t even seem to feel it.

On the other side of the brute, the Knight-Captain was shouting, red cape fluttering in the wind, the other knights fanned out in a semicircle along the lip of the rock. As Leyn watched, waiting for another opportunity, a knight lost his footing and fell over the side with an unmanly shriek. Leyn cursed, feeling a swell of hatred, white and hot, for the loathsome beast.

Seeming to sense his animosity, it swung its head toward him. Behind the holes in its rusted helmet nothing could be seen but darkness. At the bottom of the helmet was a larger, round orifice—an opening for the creature’s mouth, which seemed strangely small in proportion to the rest of its body. From out between the crooked teeth dribbled a black fluid that hissed where it fell. This beast was surely something out of hell itself.

But the Wolf-bane was not daunted. The grizzled warrior strode forward and thrust his sword up, into the beast’s mouth, and threw back his head in a deep booming laugh, a sound of sheer triumph, as flames licked through the holes in its helmet.

The answering sound that issued from the beast was deafening, a howl of bestial agony. Still with the sword lodged in its head, it rammed into the Captain. Cenric went down, and the beast trampled over him.

Leyn’s heart leapt in horror as he saw the venerable Captain fall. Surely—Merciful Arion, he wasn’t _dead?_ The Scourge of the North laid low by this abomination… It could not— _must not—_ be.

Heedless now of the danger, Leyn dashed forward, senses narrowing to a red, roaring tunnel of rage. With a shout, he drove his sword full into the side of the brute’s knee, until only the hilt was protruding from the grey flesh. He only just managed to jerk it out again, then fell back as the beast, bellowing, maddened with pain, blundered toward him in a furious, desperate charge.

_Come on, just a little further, you vile thing…_

He felt the vastness of the empty wind behind him and the crunch of pebbles under his feet as he backed to the very edge of the crag. There was a screech, and he was dimly aware of a winged shape coming down from the fog behind the beast. _Mykal_!

Leyn threw himself aside at the last minute, and the grave-beast, spurred on by the rending talons of the griffon behind it, and too large to easily slow its momentum, went careening over the side of the spire. It fell with a final roar of fury and fear, then there was a titanic crash as it landed, and, at last, all was silent and still.

Brother Aldric came over to help him up, and together they staggered to the edge, and peered over. Below the corpse of the beast was a motionless mound.

Brother Aldric clapped him on the back. ‘It’s done. It’s dead. You killed the beast, young Brother.’

Leyn felt a glow of pride spread from his chest to the tips of his ears. But then he checked himself.  ‘You ought not to say so, Brother, it was—'

But before Leyn could protest that the man’s praise was unearned, that he had played only a part in the slaying of the creature, a growling voice came from behind them. ‘Boy. Come here.’

Leyn wiped his blade on his surcoat as he walked toward the Knight-Captain, who was being helped to sit up. The man was breathing heavily and had blood trickling down the sides of his face, soaking his grey sideburns, but he gruffly waved off the ministrations of his attendants.

‘Brother Leyn. That was quick thinking there. Good bladework, too.’

‘I—thank you, Brother-Captain.’

Captain Cenric coughed and spat with a wince, ‘How old are ye, lad?

‘Eighteen summers, sir.’

‘Eighteen summers, eh? Yer a fine big lad.’

Brother Symon emerged from the chapel, a cleric at his side. He approached Captain Cenric. ‘Brother-Captain.’

‘What is it?’

‘The clerics have detected the taint of darkbinding. There were Shadow-sorcerers here.’

‘Shadow-sorcerers?’

‘Yes, sir. A party of them, by the amount of baggage they left behind.’

Brother Aldric clenched a fist. ‘Great God. They must have used their foul magics to summon the dead from their graves.’

Captain Cenric turned toward the west, his eyes growing distant. ‘The Shadowbloods have grown bold indeed to strike so far east...’ He tugged at his ash-and-snow-speckled beard. ‘This whole blighted mire is swarming with unliving. If the lychwall is breached, the border-towns and the lands beyond will be overrun.’

He stroked his chin for a while longer, gazing out from the spire where they stood, over the bleak lands that surrounded them. Then he seemed to make up his mind, turning back to face the knights assembled around him.

‘Brother Aldric—pile the corpses and burn them. Brother Symon—see that the wounded are nursed, and any infected given their peace. Prepare the others to depart by nightfall. These marshes are long overdue for a purging. Brother Leyn—I want you to take your section and hunt down these sorcerers.’

‘Yes, Brother-Captain. I shan’t fail.’


	6. The Lychmaster

They walked for two nights and slept during the day, when the lyches also slumbered. The pale witchfire, while effective in its purpose, gave only faint illumination, and the others proceeded with especial care. Sinkholes and pools of quicksand were the least of the dangers that lurked beneath the surface of the sea of slime. Bryony was untroubled—his darksight meant he could see further and more clearly at night than during the day.

Ynara’s tending seemed to improve Colmag’s condition, and after three nights her fever abated. Instead, it was Laar who became sick. The man began retching black bile, and reported a strong pain in his right arm. After a while the pain spread to the rest of his body, while the arm itself become numb, dulled to sensation. When prevailed upon to uncover the arm for examination, the reason for his illness became clear. The arm was swollen, and had an evil-looking grey-green discolouration from the hand to up past the elbow. When it was cut, he felt no pain, though the arm oozed thick, putrid pus and dark, syrup-like blood. There was a gash, angry and red and unscabbed, at his wrist. A lych-bite, no question about it.

At first, Laar said, he had not noticed the bite, engrossed as he was in the heat of combat, and when he had realised, the fool had paid it no mind, thinking it but a flesh-wound. This was the real menace of the unliving. Few, save the old and slow and weak, actually died to them outright. Most, however, sustained injuries, even ones as minor as a bite—and a bite was all it took.

‘I say we leave him’, Bryony said. ‘It won’t take more than a few days, but we’ll be long gone by then.’

‘Out of the question’, Alaris said firmly, forestalling Kaidi, who looked about to go for Bryony’s throat. ‘We must find someplace to tend to him. He isn’t beyond hope yet.’

 

Fortunately, it was early the next morning, when the first pale fingers of dawn were painting the sky, that they came upon the only habitation they had seen in the marshes. On a small grey hill squatted a low cottage of drystone packed with earth. Around the house was a ring of animal skulls mounted on wooden stakes. More skulls hung on strings from eaves of rotting thatch—all of them no doubt enchanted to repel lyches. The hovel appeared dilapidated and derelict in every sense: windows boarded over, walls crumbling. There was, however, a thin trail of smoke rising from the listing chimney.

They stopped once they were within the ring, a few yards from the cottage. Even as they looked at one another, wondering who would claim the dubious honour of knocking, the door creaked open, and a short, hunchbacked figure appeared. Its long robe was made of large, crudely-stitched patches of pink leather, which had indeed a healthier complexion than the person’s own blue-grey skin, stretched strangely taut over the lean ligaments of its face and forearms, as though it had been embalmed alive. It wore over the robe a bulky cloak of darker skins, with a ragged fur mantle about its bent shoulders. Every movement was accompanied by the chattering of the dozens of skulls—animal and human—and bones, some only half-decayed, that dangled down its back. On its head was a pointed hat of the same flesh-coloured leather and from its belt hung a long bone-knife, notched and crooked like a broken arm. The blade’s pommel appeared to be the chubby hand of a small child.

It laughed, a hideous, burbling chuckle that sounded like a baby gargling blood. ‘Hail, friends!’, it cried. ‘Hail and welcome!’ As it came shuffling toward them, several of the company drew in sharp breaths. Its face was repellent—long, hooked nose and thin, bloodless lips pulled back in a ghastly grin that showed too many teeth for a human. Its eyelids were sewn shut, yet for all that it moved with an unnerving deftness. Quite what race it was Bryony could not tell, nor could he guess age or sex from its appearance or speech. It wasn’t as though it mattered anyhow, with this sort.

‘Goodma—woman—ah, friend,’ Alaris said, ‘we ten travellers have come across the marsh from Dunmire. We are all much wearied, and our friend is, ah, unwell.’ Bryony noted she did not specify the nature of Laar’s ailment. ‘We would be deeply grateful for shelter, and for such food as you can spare. There would of course be payment for your hospitality.’

‘None needed, none needed’, the strange being chortled. It spoke Averin with an indeterminate accent. ‘Why, company itself would be payment enough. It has been many years and long since I have had the pleasure of speech with living flesh and blood. Please, come in.’

Sister Eudeline looked as though she had inhaled a lemon. ‘Lady Alaris,’ she began, ‘surely, a _necromant—_ '

The soldier cut her off. ‘I don’t like it any more than you, Sister, but we have no choice. Laar has no choice.’

The priestess huffed, but didn’t argue further.

 

Within, the cottage was as dingy as it had looked from the outside: grimy and musty and only marginally warmer and drier than the marsh. The floor was packed dirt, piled with rushes; the furnishings were carved bone. The walls were covered with skins—some had faces, stretched eternally in awful, silent screams. They seemed to be in a common room of sorts. There was a fireplace with a bubbling cauldron; two barrels, one filled with none-too-clean-looking water, the other stinking with the carcasses of pallid worms and scaleless fish; some shelves and chairs, and a table—on this they laid Laar, who was fevered, hair dark with sweat and jaw clenched against the pain.

Sister Eudeline tucked back a loose strand of silver hair and murmured over her prayer-beads, grey eyes dissecting the wound.

‘Now then’, she said, returning the beads to the hook at her waist, and pushing up her sleeves. Hands, lined but nimble, roved over Laar’s arm, finally coming to rest at the place, a little below the man’s shoulder, where sickly pale met deathly green. She muttered another prayer, then pulled her hands down the man’s arm, face tight with exertion. As she did so, the green pallor seemed to retreat, and the arm regained a healthy pink hue. Dark blood and clear fluid seeped from under his fingernails, but Laar made no sound, though a vein in his forehead bulged as though it might burst. When she reached his wrist, she stopped. Her hands were trembling, as if holding an immense weight. By this point the priestess’ already pale complexion was white as death, and there were beads of sweat pearling on her brow.

With a cry, she released Laar’s arm. Immediately the lych-taint surged back up his limb to its highpoint under the shoulder, like water filling a clear pipe. Sister Eudeline staggered back from table.

‘I cannot...’, she gasped. ‘The corruption has sunk its roots too deep.’

Bryony sneered. ‘Some lych-priestess you are.’

Sister Eudeline, evidently too exhausted to reply, fumbled her way to a chair, and sank down with a sigh.

‘Well’, Tam said, ‘s’pose there’s aye his airm. Gin we tak that off, at the least he’ll be nae lyke.’

‘Never’, Laar growled through gritted teeth. ‘A one-armed warrior—pah! Death is better.’

‘If you do take the arm off, please don’t burn it’, the necromant said, smiling. ‘I can always use more material.’

Kaidi gave the hermit a death-glare, and Laar made as if to rise, but slumped back again with a groan.

Ynara spoke. ‘I will look at the arm, if you will, crow-people. At the least I may be able to ease the pain.’

Ynara pulled a handful of dark leaves from the herb-pouch at her waist, and placed them in a clay bowl with a cinder from the fire. Soon the bowl started to smoke, a pungent amber vapour that made Bryony feel drowsy. Ynara held it under Laar’s nose, and bade him breathe it in. After a few long inhalations his eyes closed, and his head lolled back onto the table.

‘You won’t really cut off his arm, will you?’ Kaidi said to Ynara.

The witch shook her head. ‘No, crow-sister. If we were at my own house, then maybe.  But out here…it would kill him as surely as this wound, and quicker.’

She remained bent over Laar for some time, poking and prodding at the arm and sucking her teeth. After a while she sighed and said, ‘I have no medicine for this.’ The boneseer straightened and turned to Bryony. ‘You, Shadowblood. You have sith.’

‘Not that kind, witchling.’

‘But can you heal him?’

Bryony went over to the table. Shadowsith was offensive-oriented magic, but it did (theoretically) have some (highly-limited) curative capacity. Bryony had used it on himself, to dull pain or staunch bleeding until he could find a proper chirurgeon. He had never attempted to heal the wounds of another. Still, if he did save the man, the others might be more inclined to trust him. Furthermore, the barbarian would be beholden to him.

‘I can’t take the corruption from his body.  But I can seal it in, so it doesn’t spread.’

Kaidi hovered beside her unconscious husband, one hand on her belly, the other clenched tight around his uninjured hand. ‘Do it’, she said.

‘Be warned, tribeswoman: this is darkbinding, not healing. There will be a price. Your husband may survive, but he will not be unscathed.’

‘A warrior’s scars are a mark of his strength.’

‘I’m not talking only about his body.’

This seemed to give the woman pause, and she remained silent for a moment, head bowed, hands stroking her husband’s head. ‘I cannot lose him’, she said at last, voice soft and strained. ‘Not before he holds his son in his arms.’

‘So be it.’

He pulled a bag out of the pocket at his left hip. From it he took a set of small steel pins, which he placed in an even ring around the man’s bicep, a few inches below the shoulder. A dark line, as of black ink, ran from one pin to the next until the circle was complete. This technique was meant for a tourniquet; here it would cut off the bloodstream and keep the taint from infecting the rest of the man’s body. Now for the arm itself.

Bryony rested his hands on Laar’s arm, and closed his eyes. The man’s skin felt thick and waxy to his touch, like oiled leather. The muscle underneath was swollen and hard—halfway to lychflesh already.

Deeper, further down, there was something else. He could touch the corruption—green and pulsing and rotten as a grave, sliding its foul tendrils through the man’s veins and tissue, slowing his blood and necrotising his flesh. If left for even a few days longer…

Bryony’s heartrate slowed, breaths coming deep and even. He felt the familiar prickles of pain, like tiny needles, running down his arms, down to the tips of his fingers, and through them into Laar’s arm. He focussed on weaving the green strands into Laar’s tissue, lulling the corruption into dormancy, so it wouldn’t consume him. As Bryony worked, he said a prayer of his own.

_Here is strong flesh and a strong will, ready to be broken to Thy service. He is Thine, Lord, if Thou wilt save him._

When Laar woke the first thing he did was inspect Bryony’s work. ‘My arm, it looks…dead.’ His face was both appalled and fascinated.

‘That’s because it _is_ technically dead—or half-dead, at least. The rest of you will, however, remain alive—provided you don’t do anything stupid.’

Bryony took an earthenware mug from a shelf, and offered it to Laar. ‘See if you can hold this.’

The man took the cup, and then shouted as it shattered in his hand.

‘You’ll find your arm is stronger than before. It also won’t feel pain.’

‘It will take some getting used to’, Laar said, though he sounded less disgusted now, and more intrigued. He picked the shards of pottery from his hand and flexed his fingers speculatively. Then he turned his gaze to his arm, eyes tracing the dark lines that twisted down over the ashen flesh from the ring around his bicep.

‘These marks—I mislike them.’

‘Insolent worm. An ashmark is an honour you don’t deserve.’

The barbarian scoffed, but subsided.

The necromant, who was stood in the back of the room, and had been watching the proceedings with interest, coughed. ‘If I might have my table back, I’ll start on the midday meal. You must all be…hungry.’

 

Dinner, when it eventuated, was a pale brown stew made from an indeterminate meat. None of them had eaten since the grey chapel—much of their supplies had been left behind in the confusion of their flight, and there was no game or forage to be had in the marshes; even the swamp-fish seemed to have retreated into the mud. Nor had there been time to stop for meals. All in all, they were hungry enough to eat without thinking too hard about what sort of meat it was.

The conversation, such as it was, was stilted. Some of the others started to talk with one another, but trailed off when they became conscious of the hermit’s blind face turned toward them, mouth open as though it wished to drink in every human sound. Lia seemed an object of particular fascination. When the meal was done, the necromant lingered, hanging over the girl like a vulture, breathing heavy.

‘Such exquisite flesh...’, it cooed, brushing a skeletal hand along Lia’s wrist. The girl pulled her hand away, paling. Bryony snickered. Alaris pointedly clattered her sword onto the table. The hermit slithered off, gurgling to itself.

Besides the common room, and the hermit’s own bedchamber and study, which were forbidden to them, the cottage comprised a storeroom, a room with a single bed (this Lia got) and a loft, where the rest of the company slept. At the end of the narrow passage was another door, a small one, set low in the wall. This too they were told not to open—though such a warning was scarcely needed, the door being crossed with iron chains.

The straw smelled of rot, but Bryony was just glad to have something approaching a bed. His body still ached from its exertions in the Grey Garden, and his head throbbed from the expenditure of power over Laar. The Shadow never gave without taking in return. But Bryony was used to the after-effects of shadowsith. He took a philtre of willow bark powder from his poison chest to ease the pain and tried to make himself relax, though everything about the hermit and his hovel had him on edge.

He fell asleep sometime after midnight, and awoke before dawn. He preferred to sleep as little as possible, as a rule. His dreams took him to places Bryony would rather forget.

So he lay awake, listening to the noises that came from the sleeping forms about him, and the nocturnal world beyond the walls of the hut. Amid the breaths and murmurs, the pattering rain and the soughing of the wind through the cracks and crannies of the house, there was something else. Something niggling at his mind—the same thing that had been bothering him all through the evening. Only now did he get his finger on what it was. That door, the small one they had been told was out of bounds. It was at the rear of the house, and it had been hard to guess the cottage’s dimensions in the haze and rain; yet if Bryony judged aright, that door should open onto nothing but empty marshland. So why was the hermit so adamant it remain closed? What was he hiding?

He rose, stepping over the stirless bodies of the others, climbed soundlessly down the ladder, and crept down the narrow corridor. On the way, he noticed the door to the hermit’s study was slightly ajar.

Peering in, his nose was not so much assailed as slowly infected with an astringent, chemical smell of arrested decay and deformed life. It was the same nameless scent that clung to the hermit, but redoubled and intensified a hundredfold. The room was cramped and cluttered with liver-spotted books, alchemical instruments and arcane devices, brass and polished wood glinting fitfully in the guttering candlelight. All around the walls, from floor to ceiling, were shelves holding tall jars of murky fluid. In them floated all manner of unchancy things, things half-formed and half-human. Snakes with three heads and toothed mouths, small runty creatures with wizened human faces and cloven hooves and squirming worms for tails. Vile amalgams of man with every beast under the sun, and some Bryony doubted had ever seen the light at all. Worst of all, what gave even Bryony a small shiver of disgust, were the babies. The jars held dozens of human infants, or at least that is what they appeared to be. They had all been...altered.

This was why he hated necromants. They took the Living Lord’s perfect creation, and _warped_ it. They had no respect for the order of existence, especially that most indelible of distinctions: the boundary between what is living and what is dead.

So absorbed was Bryony in the ghoulish specimens, that at first he failed to register the other presence in the room.

The lychmaster, his back to the door, was hunched over a large table that looked to be made of bone black as charcoal. Bryony’s breath caught, but the old creature did not seem to have noticed the intrusion. Indeed, he made no movement at all, giving less sign of life that the monstrosities lining the walls, save for his muttering. ‘…A little more of the black bile to balance the humours... gah! Not enough blood! Corpse-blood old and slow and weak... Need strong blood...fresh blood...’

Bryony could not get a clear glimpse of what was on the table, but it was long and large and seemed to be alive, or at least moving. There were iron shackles at the four corners of the table...

Enough of this. Ordinarily Bryony would have been confident in his ability to conceal himself in the shadows of the room. But then, the hermit shouldn’t have been able to see anyway.

Bryony stepped out of the room as silently as he had entered, making sure to leave the door slightly open. He padded to the end of the short hallway. There was the door, standing in its warped frame, locked and barred and chained. He put his ear against its dark timber. There was a sound of scratching and scraping against wood, and also a low, barely-audible moaning, as of— _lyches._

Bryony froze. A gurgling breath came from behind him. He turned to find the hermit gliding toward him down the darkened passage, long, crooked knife gleaming dully in its hand. ‘Curious, is it? Small pretty thing with flesh of snow and heart of shadow. Wants to know what is behind the door, does it? Come, I’ll show you. You can join them. It is so very lonely down there in the dark—they’ll welcome the company.’

Bryony snarled to show he wasn’t afraid, but turned from the dim door and stalked off, wrapping the shadows close about him. So, the necromant was keeping unliving in its cellar. As what—livestock? Subjects for unholy experiments? Well, better the lyches than him. They were leaving tomorrow.

 

⁂

 

They did not leave tomorrow, as it turned out. A sudden storm came down from the mountains overnight, huge grey thunderheads carrying driving rain and lightning under their wings. That evening there was no stew for supper—only hard cheese and mouldy bread. The lychmaster was clearly as displeased with the delayed departure as they were.

Hours later, Bryony found himself again awake and alert in the chill greyness of the early morning. This time it was not a thought, but a sound, which had awakened him. The rustle of the hermit’s patchleather robe over the floor, and then the creak of a door. Could the necromant be visiting his loathsome grave-cattle? Did he intend to loose them on his guests?

When Bryony slunk into the hall, however, it was Lia’s door that was open. Heart seizing with a sudden fear, he flew down the passage and through the open door. The necromant was stooped over the bed, toothed bone-blade hovering above the sleeping girl’s exposed left breast.

Bryony sprinted into the room, pressed himself against the creature’s back and brought his hand up to its neck, shadow coalescing into a spectral blade that whispered at the lychmaster’s lean throat. The hermit froze.

‘I wouldn’t take much’, it croaked. ‘Just a small piece. Just enough to taste...’

‘Get out,’ Bryony said, ‘before I flay your twisted soul from your body.’ And to show he meant it, he reached out with his third hand, his hand of darkness, gripping the tiny, shrivelled thing that was the creature’s soul, and squeezed tight.

The necromant gurgled in fear, dropping the knife and fleeing from the room.

The girl’s eyes cracked open. ‘Is he gone?’ she asked, her voice faint with horror. So she had been awake after all. Then, after a pause which Bryony did not bother to fill. ‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t do it for you, Godslut. My orders are to keep you alive and unspoiled.’

Nonetheless, he sat behind her door until dawn came.

 

⁂

 

By the next day the storm had mostly blown over, and the company prepared to continue on their way. Alaris left some silver coins with the hermit—a pointless gesture, Bryony thought. What would the old creature spend them on? Still, the hermit seemed to like them, holding them up to the sunlight and burbling as they glimmered. It made Bryony wish he’d set fire to the grave-worm’s noisome hovel as a parting gift of his own.

Before them the end of the marshes, which had till now seemed as though they must stretch on forever, hovered on the edge of the horizon. Islets grew to islands and islands to promontories, while lakes shrank to pools and pools shrank to puddles, and puddles dried up altogether. The cancerous marsh-stench, which they had been breathing so long it was undetectable, was now notable by its absence. The all-pervasive mist thinned, and here and there rays of pale sunlight pierced the necrophilous haze. Faint as the golden beams were, Bryony wished for a brief moment that he could feel them on his bare face, just the once.


	7. Desperation

_Under-Tower_

It was Lump who first had the idea of putting in two at once. Honey always knew when it was Lump by the shape of his cock—short and fatter around than Honey’s arm.

Honey was already being fucked by Knife, a boy who had a narrow, wedge-shaped face and, as his name suggested, liked knives. Honey had heard that he liked to do things with them to his boys. He was always looking for new ones—new knives, and new boys. Fortunately, the Brute didn’t let him do those things to Honey, so he supposed that was something to be thankful for.

Knife was cruel enough in other ways, though, jabbing into Honey fast and sharp, gnawing at his face and neck like a rat, and twisting his nipples until Honey thought he was going to pull them right off. As always when he was being had by someone mean, he tried to make his mind go small and far away. It sometimes worked.

That day Lump crouched down behind him, and opened his breeches. Honey was steeling himself to take Lump’s girth (no need to clench to make it tight for Lump), when he realised that Knife hadn’t pulled out.

At first it was nudging, gently, almost politely, at Honey’s pucker, which was already was stretched around Knife’s thickness. Mind hazy and only semi-sensate, Honey couldn’t even find the words to tell them to stop, that there was no way it was going to fit.

 _Surely he won’t—he_ can’t.

But all of a sudden, he _was,_ breaching the rim of Honey’s inflamed hole, and shoving into his already-full passage. Honey did scream then, a long, thin wail of pain and fright that sounded to his own ears like the cry of a distressed animal.

‘Oh, shut your cock’ole’, Lump said, giving Honey a belt around the head. ‘Ere, Bagsy, come and shut the bitch up.’

This Bagsy did eagerly, plunging his prick into Honey’s mouth and stifling his screams. His one was thin and long enough to batter the back of Honey’s throat with every thrust. Honey knew swallowing would be painful for days.

‘Fuuuck, it’s unreal innit, having ‘em screaming ‘round your dick.

‘Too right’, Knife said, ‘S’like when their cunt starts bleeding. Makes it all good and slick.’

After that having two pricks tearing open Honey’s arse became a fixture of the Brute’s ‘treats’. Once a particularly enterprising young lad—a newcomer to the gang, and to Honey, tried to fit in three. The Brute had actually been worried that time, worried Bryony was permanently broken.

The only silver lining to it all was that the Brute would leave him alone for a bit, after. At least, until he stopped bleeding.

There was one boy who was kind to Honey. Squint was his name. He was tremendously ugly, but he always put it in very slowly (which was good, because he was bigger than the Brute) and tried to hit the spot inside Honey that made his toes curl and his cock ache. While he was doing it, he would give Honey kisses, which were rather nice, once Honey got past the foulness of the boy’s breath. And afterward he would take Honey’s own small cocklet in his hand—or sometimes even in his mouth, which nobody had ever done to Honey—and tug or suck until Honey was squealing and gasping and squirting everywhere.

Only, the trouble, which Honey really should have seen coming, because nothing good ever lasted in the warrens, was that Squint was too kind, and too often—he paid Honey enough notice to make the Brute take notice of _him._

So it was that, one day, when returning to the Brute’s court from a (fruitless) food-foraging foray, Honey found the Brute sitting on his throne, wearing a small smile that turned Honey’s insides to water.

Licking his lips, Honey searched the faces of the boys who were gathered round, looking for some clue as to what was going on. Had the Brute decided to share him again?

Beside the throne stood Lump’s boy, Snowdrop. The boy was a schemer and a tattler, and loved to get the other ratlings in trouble. He flashed Honey a horrid little smirk.

‘Looking for someone?’, the Brute asked in a pleasant, conversational tone.

Honey shook his head uncertainly.

‘Are you sure? I think you might be lying to me, little rat. You were looking for Squint, weren’t you? Well you needn’t look any longer—I have him right here.’ With that, he snapped his fingers, and a boy—Knife—stepped forward.

He was holding a head.

If it wasn’t for the Brute’s words, Honey wouldn’t have known it was Squint. It was barely recognisable as human, the bloody ruin of his face—eyeless, noseless, earless, lifeless.

‘Look, Honey, I left his lips on—just for you. I know how much you like his kisses.’

Honey shook his head—his whole body was shaking; his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth. His mind was racing. Snowdrop—he must have whispered in the Brute’s ear about Squint. Jealous little wretch, Honey should have known better than to refuse him that bit of bread…

Meanwhile the Brute had abandoned any attempt at concealing his fury. He broke through the whirl of Honey’s thoughts. ‘Go on then, you little whore—give ol’ Squinty a fucking kiss!’

Then Honey was screaming, screaming as hands grabbed his hair and his face was shoved against that awful dead face with its awful bloody flesh—flesh that was still warm, blood that was still wet.

When the hands finally released him, he fell to the floor, tears wetting his cheeks. He looked up, pleading silently. But the Brute’s gaze was pitiless. ‘Bring me Fat-flayer’, he commanded.

Honey felt his panic doused in a cold wave of dread, bone-deep and numbing. Surely the Brute didn’t mean to use that thing on _him._

Everything shrank to a few key registers. The sound of his heart thudding in his ears. The clink of the steel links as the Brute hefted the weapon, and raised it above his head. The whizzing sound of the chains as they whirled; he could practically feel the throb of the air around them.

Honey got up, wiping at his face, scrambling blindly for an escape.

A blow to the back of his knees knocked him flat on his front. Then hands were on him, pinioning his arms and legs, tearing off his shift. He waited, trembling, whimpering with fear.

_Swish, swish._

Just when Honey thought that perhaps the Brute had only wanted to scare him, the pattern of the whir stuttered.

The next instant Honey was wailing with a mind-splitting, unbelievable pain, as what felt like a hundred miniature explosions bloomed across his back. The pain didn’t end with impact, only worsened as the steel tips pulled reluctantly from his flesh, leaving behind burning holes where each barb had lodged. As he heard that awful hum start up again, like the droning of a giant insect, he tried to prepare himself, steel himself for the next swing.

Nothing could have prepared him for the pain that followed that second blow. Nor the one after that, or the one after that.

Ten stripes in all: he knew that because it was the number the boys standing around were chanting under their breath. His back and shoulders were one mass of fire, and his vision was bleary, dimming at the edges.

It was then, when he thought the pain couldn’t get any worse, that he heard the familiar rustle of the Brute opening the front of his breeches. He tensed, waiting for the boy to force himself into one or other of Honey’s orifices. But the Brute did not move. He remained standing, looming over Honey.

Then Honey’s nostrils filled with an acrid tang, and he felt a wetness in his hair. The Brute was pissing on him. Laughing, the others followed suit, dousing Honey in warm, pungent fluid.  The salt of their urine on his bloody wounds made the shower feel like a swarm of the stinging hornets that were sometimes released into the warrens.

After, he lay on the pallet where he had been tossed like so much rubbish, stinking and stinging, wishing he could die rather than endure the agony for one more minute.

The other kept boys (apart from Snowdrop), expressing the innate solidarity of the utterly powerless, came to wash Bryony, and clean his wounds. As they left, whispering words of sympathy, one of them pressed something dry and flat into his hand. He was too exhausted, too consumed by the pain to look at it, and quickly fell back into merciful oblivion.

But when he woke the next day (or was it night? It was all much the same in the warrens) the parchment, for that is what it was, was still clutched tight in his hand. He opened out the frayed leaf, squinting through the red clouds that floated in his vision. It was a page torn out of a book.

It had a picture on it, faded and a little grimed, but the colours were still bright and clear. It showed a man in gleaming armour, brandishing a long sword and a wide shield. He was young, and fair of face, fairer than any boy Honey had seen. Around his golden curls was a circle of a brighter gold: the paint was cracked, but still held its lustre. More gold glistened in rays emanating from his sword and shield, piercing the shadows that hemmed him in. The knight was facing a beast that seemed to be made of the night itself, ink-black teeth and talons poised to tear into him--but there was no fear in his face. Behind the knight was a woman with a child in her arms. _To protect the innocent with valour,_ read the words underneath the picture.

It was like the stories Honey’s mother used to tell, of the radiant knights who ruled the blue summer skies of the lands where the shade of night never fell, and it was always light forever. He stroked the picture with trembling fingers. The pain retreated to the back of his awareness, and he let himself dream of a noble knight with shining golden hair and a bright silver sword, one who would carry Honey away in his strong arms, carry him far away from the Brute and the warrens and their daily waking nightmares. For the briefest of moments, Honey could feel those arms around him, enveloping him in warmth and safety. Then there was the faint but unmistakeable sound of a distant scream, and the sensation faded.

No knight was coming to save Honey.

But there was someone who might.

 

Over the ensuing days the pain slowly dulled from sharp needle-pricks to an even ache that cloaked him like a second skin, until he was able to drag himself effortfully to his feet. First he walked, then, when he trusted his legs to carry him, he ran. He ran out of the Brute’s hall, down the winding passages, on and on until the last light had been left far behind.

He remembered the way, for all that it had been years since he last walked it. Honey knew it now to be one of the places where boons appeared from the Tower above; gifts from the Watchers, bestowed on those who showed promise. No one else, to his knowledge, had found this one. It had saved his life, once, when he was new to the warrens.

He had stumbled upon it when fleeing a pack of brutes (Honey, on the brink of starvation, had stolen food). He had run until his legs were pillars of pain, his chest a vice, his heart a burning brand. He ran until there was nowhere left to run and he was trapped between a blank wall and the fast-approaching footsteps of his pursuers.

At first he beat his fists uselessly against the unrelenting stone. Then he paused. The wall was not blank after all. Carved into the stone was an eye, its pupil a vertical slit, like a cat’s, set in the middle of a shape with six points. It sent a chill along his spine. He could almost _feel_ the dark holiness of it. Did this Eye belong to the Watchers?

‘Please’, he said, not knowing with whom or what he was pleading, ‘don’t let them catch me.’

To his amazement, his appeal was answered. The stones juddered, then, slowly, as if unwilling, they slid apart, folding back on themselves to reveal a dark, empty space in the wall. He had crammed his scrawny body into the dark aperture, and hid there, heels against his buttocks and head between his knees, until he was sure they were gone.

Today he also ran, but this time his feet were winged by anger, not fear. Lust for vengeance sang through his veins like a river of fire. The Eye had helped him once before; maybe it would do so again—though in truth he had little hope of it. The Watchers gave only to the strong and cunning and cruel, those of mighty deeds. Honey was puny and weak and timid. He had done no great deeds. He had been a mere vessel for the whims of others. Still, small as it was, it was all the hope he had.

Honey was at the brink. Thrust into the warrens when little more than babes, ratlings survived out of sheer, blind instinct. They survived because that was what people _did_ , what they did without thinking. They fought and struggled and schemed and toiled, all in order that they should not be the corpse that was tossed on the midden-heap that day. But there came a time when even the hungriest, stubbornest ratling, even the one most determined to live at all costs, had to pause to do the calculation, had to ask himself if it was really worth it, if it wouldn’t after all be better, be easier, to find a dark corner to curl up and die in.

Honey was making that reckoning now, and having weighed in the balance life and death, found the former sorely wanting. The rewards that came from the Brute’s hand: food, and safety—after a fashion—no longer outweighed the daily, unremitting punishment that was being the Brute’s Boy. Honey was sick of enduring buggery and beatings for bread. One way or another, it had to end.

‘Please,’ Honey said to the moveless eye upon the wall, ‘I hate him. I _hate him._ I want to kill him; give me a way to kill him. _Please._ He has to die—or I will.’

There was no reply, of course. He bent over till his forehead was resting on the cold floor, and sobbed till his voice failed.


	8. Silver

‘Tell us about this party. Who were they, and how many, and where were they headed?’

A sly expression came over the old hermit’s face. Leyn imagined his eyes gleaming behind their sewn-shut lids.

The morning was a cold grey stillness. They only sound was the soft clacking of the skulls that dangled from the eaves of the house, as they swung in a turgid breeze. At first the necromant had refused to open the door; it was only when Wullem had threatened to bash it down that the old man had emerged, slinking from his hovel into the pale sunlight like a rat from its nest.

‘It is possible I could remember. If, perchance, there was silver…’

 _I thought it would be something like that._ Leyn looked at Wullem, who was standing by the griffons, and tilted his chin toward the hermit.

‘Brother Wullem. Give the man his silver.’

Wullem blinked his too-close eyes and brusquely fished through the saddlebags for his purse. He poured some of the silver coins into his palm, walked over and handed them to the necromant. The old man let out a small burble of excitement. He took the coins, and turned back to Leyn.

‘Well, these folk, they came from the grey chapel. One of them had the lych-taint. They stayed for only a few nights, and left nigh a week ago.’

‘How many were there? What direction did they go?’

The man shifted, his ghoulish robe rustling, turning from Wullem to Leyn as if he could read their expressions. Maybe he could. Who knew _what_ the vile creature was capable of?

‘A little more silver, perhaps?’

Leyn sighed, shaking his head when Wullem looked at him inquiringly. ‘The man wants more silver.’

Reluctantly, Wullem proffered the coin pouch to the ancient hermit. The man snatched it, suspicious but greedy, pawing at the leather with a dry cackle.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I remember now. There were ten of them—they stayed only a few days. They were travelling toward the mountains.’

‘How many of them were shadow-workers?’

The hermit cocked his head to the side, and gave Leyn a thin, crabwise smile. ‘I don’t know.’

Leyn arched an eyebrow. ‘You don’t know? We give you a full bag of silver, and you _don’t know?_ ’ He rested his hand, lightly but deliberately, on the hilt of his sword.

The creature licked his lips, and seemed to have second thoughts. ‘Ah, I mean—I do remember, there was one—he had a sword he pulled out of the air. A small one, he was, clad all in black, and touched by darkness.’

There could be no doubt as to what the old man was describing. A Shadowblood. One who kept unliving in his company. It had to be their quarry.

Mykal was standing behind the necromant. Meeting Leyn’s eyes, he pulled his bronze-hilted dirk—a nameday present from the twins— from his belt. He gave Leyn a nod, and then drove the blade into the creature’s back.

The necromant fell slowly to his knees, then on his face, with a choking cry and a rattle of bones. Leyn reached down to prise the bag of coins from the man’s sticklike fingers. They wouldn’t budge; the dead members were stiff as the carved hand of a statue. In the end he had to saw them off with his own belt-knife.

His conscience twinged at the betrayal; it went against the most fundamental tenets of knighthood, to stab a man in the back. But this thing had long ceased to be a man. If it ever was one.

He tossed the purse back to Wullem. Wullem caught it, and asked, ‘What of the creature’s dwelling?’

‘Set fire to the roof and whatever’s inside. Our Brother-Captain ordered these marshes purged, and purged they shall be, by blade and fire.’

Aren was eying the distant peaks. ‘If they _are_ heading toward the Stormtalons, they’ll be trapped. There’s no way across. We’ll have them.’

‘Lord willing, brother’, Leyn corrected, but inwardly he had no doubt Aren was right.

 _I have you now, sorcerer._ The thought tasted like victory.

 


End file.
